Hidden Virtues
by viggen
Summary: A North American division of NERV comes into conflict with an Angel that is attacking an unexpected target. A cripple learns to unleash her latent gift Warning, new cast
1. Section 1

Hidden Virtues of EVANGELION: The Daughter  
by viggen

When used, the most important key is the spirit of vitality. When the spirit of vitality is bright and luminous, the ears and eyes are real. It does not matter if my opponent's hands are as fast as a flying swallow, an ant's shouting to my listening is like a tiger's roaring.-

from Baguazhang 36 songs, song 36  
Emei Baguazhang -Liang, Yang and Wu

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"Here!? That's not possible!"

"I repeat," Lt. Avery shouted, glancing over his shoulder in panic, "pattern test is blue! It's an Angel! Should I inform General Teneyl?"

"He's out there in it, he already knows."

Major Belmont stared at the screen, loath streaking her fair complexion. Usually inexpressive, she now looked both angry and confused.

Circled by a plethora of small fighter aircraft, the advancing entity seemed totally untroubled by the steady hail of flak. Teneyl was a smart soldier; he had wasted no time toying around, skipping instead straight to an attack with N2 mines. A cheer went up when the detonation flash cleared, revealing the Target broken into pieces. That is, until the pieces began to move, each one growing to a full sized version of the lopsided original. When General Teneyl's forces attacked again, they learned to their dismay that each replica was as lethal as the parent. Following a second N2 attack, Belmont's group confirmed the enemy's identity.

"You're saying the N2 mines didn't even scratch it?!" Belmont asked, flicking a strand of short blond hair back behind an ear.

"No sir," Lt. Avery replied, "the target count has increased from eight to twelve after the second attack. Damned N2 mines are definitely not doing us any good. There was a strong non-transient energy spike in the Target's radiant output following both N2 attacks. Almost like it's using thermal induction to reproduce itself. Like the hotter the weapon we hit it with, the happier it's gonna be. If the defense force uses any more N2s, we'll be overwhelmed."

"Teneyl may be good, but he's obviously outclassed. We're going to need more serious aid than either the U.S. or Canada can give," Major Belmont concluded, shaking her head. "Let's make a plea for help. Lt. Wise, call NERV HQ. Give me immediate high level  
communications."

Lieutenant Wise nodded, his military cut brown hair gleaming in the command center's dim light. Fingers pounding the keyboard, he rapidly rerouted comm traffic and accessed the NERV hot line. In moments, he was connected with a Japanese internal net that lead  
straight into the final objective. When his NERV HQ counterpart finally appeared on the screen, they spent several moments conversing in Japanese. He looked back toward Belmont when he finished and told her professionally, "It'll be a little bit... sir. They need to find their duty command officer."

Belmont nodded coldly without making eye contact, "Shit. It figures. Right when we need them most..."

Silence on the other end of the line lasted barely half a minute before a raven haired woman with a red striped uniform appeared. Belmont was surprised by the lines under the woman's eyes and the rumpled state of her dress. She spoke in a bleary voice, "I'm Major  
Katsuragi."

"Major," Belmont greeted her, "I'm Major Belmont of U.S. Division One, Evangelion construction brigade, Fort Tenacity. We require immediate assistance; our defense force is engaged with an entity we identified as an Angel. We are not adequately armed to  
repel such an enemy, and the Construction Brigade in serious danger."

Immediately awake, Katsuragi looked off screen, " What is an Angel doing in the United States? " she cried in Japanese, " Why the switch in strategy, why isn't it coming to Tokyo-3? "

" Maybe it's after a nonaligned target? " someone off screen said.

" Don't give me that horse $#!T, " Katsuragi practically screamed, " Kaji told me what they were after... and there's NOTHING in the U.S. they want! " with a pause she composed herself, and switched back to English, "um... What is your state of affairs?"

Fluent in Japanese, Belmont gave no sign of understanding the outburst, "We're a construction center only. The U.S. government put us out in Middle of Nowhere, North Dakota, because they were worried about construction problems. Damned pencil-pushers  
didn't want a repeat of the Unit-04 scenario. This facility was constructed too quickly for more than minimal defensive arrangements. The plan was to build Unit-06, then mothball the lab."

"The sixth Evangelion? And you have no defense perimeter?" Katsuragi asked, trying not to appear ruffled.

"We have a small defense force, with a mechanized ground brigade, a fighter wing and a complement of N2 mines, all commanded by a fairly experienced general. In addition, local  
governments are scrambling to divert forces to help us. But it's going to be too little too late. Our data shows that this Angel seems to feed off of powerful thermal emissions. It actually reproduced itself when we hit it with N2 mines! This leaves us without our most powerful defense. We can't fight it off or immobilize it on our own."

Katsuragi looked away from the screen again for a moment, then turned back, "My chief of engineering says that this thermal effect could be a possible manifestation of AT field usage."

"Thanks for the news flash," Avery whispered too low for Katsuragi to hear him on the link. Belmont waved him quiet behind her back.

"Is Unit-06 operable?" Katsuragi continued.

Major Belmont shook her head, "Not totally; construction hasn't been completed on the auxiliary controlling systems or on much of the final subsidiary bio-structure. It was just this week that the musculature reached the minimal density for self articulation. Also the armor integrated restraints are only 57 intact. We haven't yet entered the testing phase on most of what is complete. Even if the Eva were finished right this minute, we'd still have several months of tests and fine tuning ahead of us."

Katsuragi again looked away from the screen then looked back, "Dr. Akagi informs me that an Eva can be run under the conditions you've described... if you can hold your ground, we'll take a shot at aiding you." She glanced away, " who's available?... Okay. Major, we'll bring you an Eva pilot, First Child Rei Ayanami. On a hypersonic transport, we can be there in an hour. If you install the rest of its armor and rig a power system, we can bring the Beta-2 type quick deploy field gear."

Then a second carrier broke into the communiqué, showing a bespectacled, black haired man around Belmont's age who held his hands steepled before his mouth. He spoke pointedly in unaccented english, "This is Commander Ikari. You are hereby ordered not to  
attempt activation of the unfinished Unit. Major Katsuragi..."

"S- sir?" Katsuragi looked thunderstruck. Belmont swallowed hard, she had hoped nothing like this would happen, but come to expect it during long years of dealing with Gendo Ikari.

"After the danger to Tokyo-3 has been verified as negligible, it may be possible to load Gamma type power supplies on a transport and bring Unit -00 onto station."

"But Sir, that will take 20 hours at least... including the flight." Katsuragi was practically sputtering.

"You will not activate the untested Unit outside of Magi supervision here at headquarters. Do you understand me Major Katsuragi?" his gaze shifted, seeming to search Belmont out, "Do you read that Major Belmont? Defend, but do NOT activate!"

Major Katsuragi nodded after a moment of hesitation, her eyes furious. Belmont bit her lip before nodding as well.

"In addition, Major Katsuragi," he continued nonplused, "you will not leave headquarters exposed for something as worthless as an incomplete Unit; this may be a lure by the Angel. Since Unit-01 is in Stasis lock-down and the pilot of Unit-02 has demonstrated an increasing unreliability, Unit-00 must remain on site at Tokyo-3 as a backup. Until the danger to NERV command can be verified one way or another, we cannot afford to transfer resources overseas. Finally, I repeat to you, do not attempt to bring the incomplete Unit on line."

"Yes Sir," Katsuragi responded coldly. Still, Ikari had a point; why would an Angel attack a nearly useless target in the U.S.? Visibly taking a breath to put down her anger, Katsuragi turned her attention back to Belmont, "Major Belmont, we will make an effort  
to move on station as soon as possible. Do your best to deter the Angel. Katsuragi out..." the communication went dead.

"We're in deep ca-ca," Belmont hissed to herself. Crossing her arms in exasperation, she turned and leaned against a console in order to see her full duty staff, "at this rate, we won't last twenty hours. Hell, it'll be a miracle if we last forty minutes."

Everyone in the small command suite was very quiet. Ikari had just signed their collective death warrant, and they knew it. Belmont glanced around the small room, looking into the eyes of her friends and subordinates, all of whom she'd grown close to in  
the past years of constant work. They' d all served together in the Gehirn development teams, then on Units -03 and -04, and finally on Unit-06. -How ironic- Belmont thought -not one of our Evas has made it to the battle line in one piece.- She looked at them all,  
Avery, McClellan, Dr. Valentine, Wise. There was homely comfort among these people born from an inextricable interlinking of lives. They were all reminders, recollections of darkness from the career she had chosen. Rather, facets of the hated duty that managed  
somehow to entangle her.

"Do we have any other options?" she asked, "it's obvious NERV wants us to stay here and defend our toy, even if we die trying. So what do we do?"

Nobody said anything until Valentine stepped forward, his usually dignified appearance tousled, "The way I see it, there's only one possible option."

They all turned toward him.

"We're being attacked by an Angel. The only way to repel an Angel is with an Eva... we all know this. We have an Eva." Sweat streaming down his face, he spelled it out in soft, concise tones, "I say, screw that prig Ikari! We're idiots if we don't try to use Unit-06!"

Everyone looked at everyone else. For a moment nobody thought to reply. In the distance the Angel solidified an unspoken agreement by rattling the shelves of the command suite.

"You heard what Major Katsuragi said," continuing his argument, Valentine's hands ran nervously through his hair of their own accord, "Unit-06 is usable -even if it is just half complete. All we have to do is get the last primary components connected in time."

"The doc's right," Avery put in, his face ashen, "Teneyl can't hold an angel off, even if he is one of the best Generals in the U.S.. We need the Eva."

Belmont thought for a moment, wondering whether or not it was the better part of wisdom to tempt fate by defying Gendo Ikari, "Supposing we manage to get the Unit ready in time, which is going to take a miracle, what do you suggest we use for a pilot?  
We have no able bodied 14 year olds around here."

"I'd sit in the thing if it would help," McClellan said, scratching at his shaggy beard, "supposedly, some adults can pilot Evas..."

"...childish in mind..."

"...just like your ass, huh?"

"Not to burst your bubble," Lt. Wise interrupted coolly, his eyes directed at the floor, "but no adult has ever walked away from the synchronization process in one piece."

"He would know," Belmont added, half to herself.

"Only one possibility," Valentine announced.

Heads turned toward him again.

"We could use Jane Wise," he declared with a constricted voice.

Trying to hide her shock, Belmont exclaimed, "You're nuts!" Shifting her gaze toward Lt. Wise, she expected similar surprise but found only brooding ambivalence. Jane was Lt. Wise's only daughter.

Finally managing to collect her thoughts, Belmont clutched her hands behind her back so that no one would see how white they had become. "In her state?! She's a complete invalid. If we put her into the damn thing and it goes nuts because of her health issues, we  
might as well be fighting two Angels."

"You mean as opposed to the eight individual targets running around out there as we speak?" Valentine demanded.

"Twelve," Avery corrected him, moving to check his console.

"Eight, twelve. It doesn't much matter. When that thing gets here in the next thirty, thirty-five minutes, it's probably going to leave behind a pothole that'll cover half of North Dakota. We all know what the Angels are capable of. We might as well die trying to defend ourselves, instead of waiting for it to dig us out of the hillside. Need I remind you it's in the process of tearing our defensive force to pieces as we speak."

Weighing the words very carefully as he spoke, Lt. Wise barely opened his mouth, "Will.. will the Eva go berserk if you put my daughter into it?" He paused, everyone watching him count his breaths, "Will she come back to me?" He looked like he wanted to  
say something else, but his courage failed him.

"Hard to say," Valentine replied, fumbling nervously with a calculator he'd produced from his sleeve. Normally doctor's sleight of hand was an amusement, but became an annoyance when he did it unintentionally. "If we go by the information collected in concert  
with other testing, particularly on Unit-00, we might be facing a huge problem. But... there have been small structural refinements between Unit-00 and Unit-06. I can think of several reasons why Jane has a better than average chance at synchronizing."

"But, it might explode and kill us all. Or it might just steal the girl away forever," someone else put in quietly, Belmont uncertain as to who.

"We don't know. The bottom line is, we just don't know enough."

"And," Belmont added, closing her eyes in an attempt to push away her own bias on the subject, searching for a way to shoot the idea down, "The girl has only partial use of a small portion of her body. Even if she does synchronize, how will she use the equipment? She can't even blink her eyes. I will not see another innocent destroyed by this project... especially a helpless one," ...especially that one.

Valentine fumed at her silently for a second, as if angry that she would bring up the subject of control, "She's not gone from her body. She's lost physical control, but her mind is still provably intact. If we can just use her to make the Eva active, we can cross the next bridge once we get there. Remote servos on the controls or something."

Belmont bit her lip, Lt. Wise glanced away.

"With all the incomplete systems," McClellan was saying as he turned to Belmont, "there's not much we can do with Unit-06 if we do get it active. Not even any Dummy plug avionics installed in it yet."

"That Angel is going to kill us," Valentine's voice held an a-matter-of-fact calm that did not match the twitching of his face. "The Eva might kill us, but it might not. Way I see it, we haven't got much of a choice."

-He's right,- Major Belmont sighed, realizing she was out of options, -forgive me, Jane,- "If we survive this, NERV will not be happy. Most likely, we'll all be facing court-martials for insubordination. Well then, are we agreed?"

"Damned if we do, damned if we don't," Avery did not smile as he slipped out of his seat.

There were nods around the room. Lt. Wise hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He had his reasons for hesitation. As did Belmont, if she were able to play favorites.

"Okay, there we have it. We're going to try to fight, whether Ikari likes it or not. Valentine, you take Keets and Melborne, go down to the construction hall, drain the tank and ready Unit-06."

"We might have some production grade equipment in storage," Valentine told her, "I'll have someone check."

"That works. Avery, you take a maintenance team to set plastique explosives on the gates of the holding cage and on the primary cargo egress. There are no exit ports in this base for an active Eva, so we'll have to make do. Also, gather the manpower necessary to  
release the restraints manually. Use explosives if you must. Lt. Wise," the eternal shadow passed between them, "go wake your daughter and see if you can't convince her to pilot the Eva..." she stopped for a moment.

Clicking a button on the communications panel, "General Teneyl, this is Major Belmont."

"I hear you Major," replied the general gruffly, "make it fast, I'm busy at the moment."

"General, we've got an all or nothing ploy in mind that might keep us alive. We need you to stall the Angel as long as you can."

The general sighed, "I think I can guess what you're playing at. We'll stall, but I can't guarantee more than maybe thirty minutes."

"I hope that'll be enough. Thank you, sir, Belmont out," she turned off the communications and looked back to her group, "We're committed. McClellan and I will hunt up the computers necessary to monitor activation. Let's build ourselves a weapon. Godspeed to us..." And God forgive...

"Well, screw the idea of bugging out after we get the base evacuated. Damn it! Putting the fulcrum of the battle in the hands of a military incompetent..." Teneyl grumbled to himself as he sorted through the incredible mess of comm traffic.

"I hope she knows what she's doing," Major Elston, had to shout to make himself heard over another set of explosions.

"So do I," Teneyl acknowledged shortly.

Teneyl's trained eye glanced momentarily from global data display toward the battle raging beyond the open window of the smelly, cramped C&C Humvee. A moment later, he was screamed into his headset, "Armored Platoons one through nine, circle north west and re-engage the enemy. Platoons 11 and 12, deploy to a covering formation and focus fire on the wide ends of the enemy echelon. Artillery divisions one through three deploy to the west end of the runway, and four through six to that bit of high ground we talked about to the south east, two kilometers south of the lab complex. We have to keep Them diverting away from the lab and toward the air base!"

"All due respect, Sir, but using a battle force to play bait isn't my idea of good doctrine."

Teneyl's face softened as he shook his head, "I would agree, but without N2s, this battle is a rout. As long we can keep these creatures veering away from their primary target to take pot shots at us, that's what we do. Otherwise, there's nothing else to fight  
with."

The twelve angels shambling along in an amorphous column, their slouching, eerily humanoid forms with backward knees cut black silhouettes against the low hanging overcast. They moved as a school of zombies, all of their gangly arms swaying in unison while they churned across the frozen winter prairie lands. So huge were they that full sized fighter planes buzzed around them like luna moths. Fighting an inevitably losing battle, Teneyl knew full well that normal tactical doctrine had long flown out the window.

"10-13, back the hell out of there!" His warning came too late as he watched yet another M1A4 Abrams battle tank get squashed into a muddy, burning print by a disproportionately huge Angelic foot.

"Goddamn it!" Teneyl swiveled to his display. Flicking his glance briefly to Elston he demanded, "Where's my Canadian air support -they were supposed to be here two minutes ago."

"Don't know, no further information." Elston paused, "Sir, spotters!" He pointed to another light on his display.

Teneyl nodded, flipping on the appropriate comm, "Yeah, spotters go!"

"Spotter 3, Sir," came the reply, "We've got more electromagnetic echoes. AT fields again, Sir."

The general swore, "$#!T...!" Flicking on the universal comm, "Station keeping scramble! Now, Now, NOW!"

Visible fighter craft kicked in their glowing afterburners, pulling a Chinese fire drill that sent them all scattering every which way, many of them standing on tail and disappearing up through the cloud cover. One Angel opened a hand, fanning its numerous digits out to form a monstrous paddle. With a single swat the monster transformed one sleek, expensive F-22 into a billion sparks with the serrated edge connecting its lengthy fingers. Other fighters managed to climb out untouched. On the ground, tanks and self propelled artillery also went in all directions, kicking up shadows of dust with the rapidity of their movements.

These Angels not only walked and maneuvered in harmony, they also stood and presented like a firing line of old age British musket men. In a halting stop, they all turned outward as one, each standing abruptly still as though posing for some weird photographer. Pitched to match a winking flashbulb, all the angels discharged explosively at the same time. Twelve sizzling shots rippled into the ground and through the sky, sending up pillars of fire that changed the overcast painfully to noon for the space of a  
moment. Echoes of thunder rattled in repercussion across the vast, rolling plains.

"Damage?!" Teneyl immediately ordered the instant his vision cleared. Beyond his window, the Angels were on the move again, swaying nonchalantly forward.

"Not as bad as last time. Looks like the scramble tactic messed up their targeting. Three fatalities and varying damage to ten tanks. No fighters hit in the shooting."

"Finally, looks like we're doing something right," flicking on the comm, he continued with a furrowed brow, "Excellent, execution! All groups return to attack posture."

"Sir," Elston glanced up, "News from Ellsworth Air Force Base. Two flights of B-1Bs have been diverted from live fire exercises. They'll be here in fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes?!" The general groused, "in fifteen minutes we could be road pastry. Find me those Canadian Rafales..!"

"A7?" McClellan flipped through the notebook, his fingers running down the pages as he checked operation specs. Looking up, he said, "Yeah. That one should be powerful enough to form a stable gateway interface with the Eva."

"Good." Belmont turned to the techs, "Rip it out. We'll take it up to the cage."

The two techs nodded, immediately going to work on the cover consoles hiding the computer with the hooks of their red firemen's axes. In a flurry of bashing and prying that lasted less than a minute, they had most of the paneling stripped away.

"Careful, careful," McClellan cautioned as the three of them lifted the carriage of the machine out of its recess. Fortunately, the delicate micro-mainframe core came out in something resembling one piece. Using his trusty Leatherman Tool, McClellan had the  
computer totally disconnected seconds later.

"That gives us five lap-tops and one big processor."

McClellan shook his head, "I might be able to put together a network of three machines in twenty minutes, but seven is pushing it."

"Give me four or five and I'll be happy," Belmont replied, cocking an eyebrow.

With a wince, McClellan turned away, "Major, I'll do my best. Okay, guys, cart this thing up to the cage."

Heaving the boxy computer off the ground, the two techs acknowledged and started toward the door. At the door, they almost bumped into Lt. Toho who was on her way in. Shuffling sideways, they enabled the Lieutenant to pass, then strained through the doorway themselves. Petite Toho approached Belmont, a piece of bulky electronic equipment toted behind her on a two-wheeled dolly.

"Is this what you had in mind, Major?" She asked in her usual crisp tones, moving her payload so that Belmont could take a look at it.

Belmont shrugged, "I don't know. McClellan?"

McClellan was there in a second, checking the device over, "Pre-second impact, circuitry diagnostics computer... Yeah. Avery or I could probably program the Oscilloscope to act like a Synchrograph. That's what you wanted Major."

"Sounds good. Go ahead and take it to the cage, Toho."

"Yes Sir." Toho nodded, quickly retreating the way she had come with the oscilloscope-computer in tow.

"Mac," Belmont said as she turned to leave also, "I've got some other things to take care of." Tapping her headset with a finger, "Call me if you need me."

"Sir," McClellan stopped Belmont for a moment with a raised hand, "If you're going up to the cage now, let Stormcloud know that I'm still down here. I've got to scare up some code from my machine. I'll be up to help her with the linkage software in a few  
minutes."

"Not that she's ever on time herself," Belmont grumbled on her way out the door. "Going to have to order her again to wear a headset. I'll tell her if I see her."

"Thanks Major!" McClellan called after her.

The clock was ticking with only a few minutes lost. So far, Belmont was relieved that the rapid preparations were proceeding so smoothly. She dodged people on the way down the hall who were in the process of moving modules of essential hardware. Sheets of falling metal crashing down in the distance, the air reeked of smoke from exposed wiring and warm welding torches. Staff members were busy everywhere, scavenging power cables, stray pieces of hardware and software as well as running errands to get things to their proper places. Squeezing her way through the bustle, Belmont knew that they were all doing their best.

That is, everything seemed to be going smoothly until Belmont turned a corner and bumped into Dr. Valentine.

"Alexandra, I have to speak to you."

"What are you doing down here? Why the hell aren't you at the Cage?!" She asked, instantly angry at the impertinent scientist.

"This is very important," he insisted, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"As if getting an incomplete Eva ready for battle wasn't important enough!" Belmont bit sarcastically, pushing past him in the direction she was headed.

Valentine groused visibly as he moved to catch up, "I have some free time, at least until they get the armor segments transferred from the ASM suite to the Cage. Either way, you have to know this."

"Okay, you have as long as I'm walking. What is it?"

Matching her stride, Valentine's voice dropped to a low timbre, "I didn't want to get into this when everybody was around in the command center, but you should know."

"So, out with it!"

"Uh..," he stammered, "Major, have you ever considered what would happen if we put a mind like Jane's into a functional Evangelion?"

Giving Valentine a seething sideways look, Belmont continued walking, "I hope you're not having second thoughts about putting that poor girl into an entry plug."

"No Ma'am!" he said quickly, "I'm just trying to find a way to put this delicately."

"Just say it, would you," Belmont told him in exasperation, "I don't have time to play twenty questions."

He thought a moment, "I'll start again. Major, why is the girl on this military base?"

This stopped Belmont short. She turned to look squarely at Valentine, "I don't need to tell you that. You know it as well as I do. If this is why you're wasting my time..."

"No Sir," Valentine squawked, practically waving his arms to keep from shouting in apprehension, "-Just humor me for a moment, okay?"

"Okay," Belmont started walking again, not checking to see if Valentine was keeping up, "It was a trade. The girl needed some very expensive medical attention, while NERV needed someone like her for Evangelion development."

"Why?"

Belmont harhumphed before answering, "Matrix form buffer."

"And why else?"

"There was no 'why else'." She answered.

"Come on Major, you have to have considered what would happen putting someone with Jane's abilities into an Eva."

"Quite honestly, I try very hard not to think about it."

"And you believe that the top military interests have the same moral fibers?"

Spinning around, Belmont faced him again. Now she wasn't just angry, she was furious, "If this is some fucking political editorial, Doctor, I'll have your ass in a sling so fast..."

"No Alex!" she grimaced when he used that name. "Just listen; that's only one part of what I have to say."

"Then stop tap-dancing around the point!"

At that, Valentine swallowed, "Well, to start with, there isn't going to be any remote system to control the Eva if it does activate. I didn't want to say so when we decided to use It to fight the Angel because I didn't want the rest of command staff to realize it. The Eva's controls can't be operated by a machine. Of course, I don't understand why the hell you almost made me say it in front of the entire command staff."

"We can still cover it with the remote control lie. 'Sides, it got you thinking. Maybe it even pointed out a way to kill this stupid plan before it went too far." Her last few words were distant, "I hoped to let us find another way."

"But there isn't one and you know it!" he accused venomously to her back, "You know the damn systems as well as I do... You just didn't want to think about it! The controls only help the typical fourteen year old pilot visualize the movements of the Eva."

"Yeah, yeah, I don't need a complete breakdown of the system."

"Jane isn't like everybody else."

"Of course not! She can't lift an arm or blink an eye. So you're telling me we've got a pilot who might be able to activate the Eva, but couldn't control the thing if she wanted to?"

"Okay, so she's slightly hampered when it comes to visualizing a movement by using her hands," he sputtered. "Maybe she can do it, maybe not. The major trick is that Jane's already been used as a matrix form buffer. What happens when she's the pilot? It was one  
scenario of Astra's theory."

Alexandra Belmont stopped dead cold, instantly seeing where the doctor was headed. She turned toward him, her expression silent, "You can't mean..."

"Yes. It's exactly the same situation as way back when, except Jane's playing a mixture of roles. If we complete the trinity by accident..."

"Then..." she froze, her mind racing, a series of horrifying memories rising from the shadows. The very guts of the Eva project itself. -All my fault.-

"If Jane synchronizes with Unit-06, causing it to activate, god only knows what's going to happen. We could get Jane as the pilot, or... well... you know it the same as I do. And you know damned well I'm not talking about the thing going berserk." Then he hastily added, "I still think her talents are half the reason that NERV brought her in on this, no matter what all the reports say. 'Matrix Buffer' my ass; it's just too hokey. Astra's theories were pretty clear on these possibilities."

"Does Lt. Wise know?" She asked, ignoring the second thing Valentine had said. She managed to erase her expression of shock, "Can he handle it?"

"He doesn't know. NERV never told him all the details of his wife's death. He doesn't know exactly how Astra died. If you ever bothered to ask him, you'd realize that." He paused, "The valid question is, can YOU handle it?"

Backed into a corner, Belmont could do nothing but shrug, "Do I have a choice?"

"That's only one side of the argument. Now, as I keep trying to say, imagine if Jane -of all the people on this planet- manages to synchronize successfully with the Eva." He scoffed, "Things like that must give military men wet dreams."

"Jesus..." At once, the busy hallway gathered an unseemly chill.

Harrison Wise's heart went out for his little daughter when he saw her pathetically skinny body sprawled across the bed, half in and half out of the Plexiglas lung. Sometimes he was happy that his wife, the girl's mother, had not lived long enough to witness the horrifying misfortune that befell their beautiful and talented daughter.

Once coursing in a lovely cascade to the middle of her back, the little girl's ash blond hair was cropped short for healthcare convenience. Permanently framed by gray hospital scrubs, unending medical attention had left his beautiful daughter's dainty features sallow and worn. Beneath the loose gown, her arms and legs were perforated with purple needle marks and taped full of electronic monitor leads. Every shallow breath she made was accompanied by a little electronic beep, while each thump of her heart echoed in syncopated rhythm.

Whenever a resounding rumble produced by the distant Angel carried through the ground into the base, causing the sterile white room to quiver, the little girl's blue eyes made a horrified circle of her immediate space. Her physical condition left her cut off, secluded by a wall of silence from nurses and orderlies who rushed past in the hall. People could not assuage her fears because she could not voice them. As a result, she was totally, agonizingly in the dark. The instant she saw her father, her eyes fixed on him in relief, imploring him desperately to tell her what was happening.

He sat down next to her on the bed, being certain not to disturb the clunky breathing apparatus. With his hand, he gently stroked her forehead, looking into her eyes... her only remaining sentient feature.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't be here earlier," he began, "Fort Tenacity is under attack."

She glanced up and down in an emphatic -yes-, then looked in a circle that he had come to interpret as -maybe- or -why-. With the prospect of custom made communications implants still months away, they had to rely on other means. First a subvocal sensor had spoken for her, reading the motions of her larynx, until that stopped moving. Then she'd had an optically keyed synthesizer, which worked marvelously until she was robbed of the ability to blink, and could no longer tell the computer when she made selections. Now her eyes always remained half open, a pair of tubes touching their corners to keep them moist. Unable to blink, she was forced to communicate exclusively through eye movements until she and her father devised another way.

"It's an Angel. You know what that is, right?"

Again a -yes-, -maybe-. Her face paling noticeably, her most graphic show of emotion was a swirl of the eyes.

"We don't know why. They never tell us why they attack. But, this one is probably after the Eva." He held his breath.

Although she'd never seen one before, the girl knew distantly what an Eva was. Of course, having taken part with the development process, the girl had long learned to detest the name Eva. From what Harry could tell, her part in the project had been something other than pleasant. Upon hearing a word 'Eva,' her eyes flitted to the far corner of the room, patently attempting to ignore him. Usually this gesture meant she was either angry or afraid. Or both.

Seeing fear in her eyes, he immediately tried to switch pace, "Hey, hey. Don't be like that... the Evas are on our side." Saying something to his daughter that he did not himself sincerely believe was one of the hardest things he had ever done. He was thankful that she continued to glance the other way.

"So you can read me like a book," he responded aloud. "Okay, so I've got my reservations too. I know you hated that other time more than you'll ever be able to tell me, probably as more than I hated watching. But Major Belmont has me between a rock and a  
hard place at the moment."

Slowly, she returned her gaze to him.

"This is really hard, you know. After, well, you know, it's hard to deal with this whole project. If I could get us away from it, I would in a second."

She looked away from his face at the mention of Eva again. Not quickly this time, but thoughtfully.

"This is really hard," he swallowed. "The main reason I've come here has to do with you and our Eva."

She immediately focused on him, her eyes clear and sharp. Surprised perhaps?

"It's because of the Angel. This Angel is on its way to kill us all, and we can't fight it using normal weapons. Not even N2 mines. That means that the Evas at NERV HQ are our only hope against it. Except that NERV command decided not to send us help for at  
least twenty hours. If we survive the next half hour we'll be lucky. Anyway, the Major won't let us go down without a fight. I think she's right. But, well... since only an Eva can fight an Angel, and we have no pilot, the Major wanted me to ask you if you'd be willing to do it."

The little girl's eyes danced around in a flurry, panicked, excited and unsure all at once. She gazed up at him for a long moment, before again looking away.

"Piloting the Eva isn't a quick decision, a hundred things could go wrong..." He paused to keep his voice from shaking, struggling to control his own fear. "I can't choose for you on this. Pending some miracle, the angel will probably kill us all. If you try to pilot the Eva, it may give us a fighting chance. You're the only one who might be able."

It was a hard decision. Harry held his breath, hoping against hope that she would turn it down. After glancing around a few moments longer, the girl's eyes moved in the up-down pattern, giving a tentative -yes-.

He brushed his daughter's hair and gave her a kiss on the forehead saying, "I'll let the major know. At the very least, you'll get the chance to look at a different ceiling for once..."

-Yes- Emphatic.

Dr. Louis Valentine, Director of Evangelion fabrication for Fort Tenacity, stormed into the holding cage in a huff.

"Yo Doc!" Keets shouted, jogging along a gantry to meet him. His perpetually beaming face was flushed from sweat and exertion. Squeezing between a couple of technicians who were working a pulley that was lifting an armored plate, he still wore a smile, despite the current air of stress.

Before Keets reached him, Valentine caught hold of a ladder and hoisted himself up onto a gantry toward the massive Evangelion. "Beast!" he shouted, shaking his fist in the direction of his principle charge as he approached. Throwing himself unexpectedly out of  
balance, Valentine slipped abruptly on a nearly invisible sheen of wetness that coated the grated walkway. A moment before his rump struck the metal, he narrowly managed to catch hold of the railing. "GOD dammit! Why's this catwalk wet."

"Dude, postal aerial display! Watch yer step, though." Keets told him, "We didn't want to wait for the cage to drain, so we dropped the gantry in the moment we opened the valves. That's what'cha get for running out on staff meetings to live it up with brass."

Eyeing the few people who had decided to take notice of his outburst, Valentine dragged himself to his feet, "God, how I miss the Nevada facilities. We never had to wait for the cages to empty there."

"Place is closed, Doc." Keets answered with a laugh, "Division One got mothed, and Division Two got wacked thanks to whatever dumbasses put Unit-04 together wrong. Pretty cool lookin' pot-hole though."

"Need I remind you that WE were those 'dumbasses' as you so quaintly put it."

"Yeah, I know," Keets chided, "We musta been trippin' to come out here to Nowhere North Dakota to finish putting Unit-06 together. After -03 and -04 got fucked, maybe they figure third time's a charm."

"I never will understand how you manage to keep so calm at a time like this."

"Just do, y'know?" Keets shrugged, flipping his pony-tail, "We all die; just a matter of when. Say -from your acrobatic trick- you and Belmont must be rumbling again."

"Let's not go there. As Belmont would say, I haven't got the time. Just tell me where you are with the Unit." Valentine dusted at his white lab coat with a grungy hand, probably getting more dirt on than off.

"Oh, dude, take a look," Keets pointed at the Unit.

Valentine had never before seen so many people working on an Evangelion. Ten times the typical number were gathered in the enormous bay, lending their additional strength to an extraordinary number of tasks. The gantries, usually inhabited by a handful of dour engineers and technicians, were now crammed with bustling crews. In addition to the trained supervisors and production assistants, numerous non-construction personnel could be seen hastily completing miscellaneous chores. Even a few stray medical orderlies from the base infirmary worked laying out components that were then fastened into place by more experienced hands.

"The whole base must be here," Valentine exclaimed quietly.

"Not quite. The power plant guys are still over there, and the most of the infirmary is gearing up to take casualties. Still, I think the medical docs are throwing out their extras, 'cause more and more keep showing up down here."

Amid the ambient drone of human voices and the clatter of equipment, Unit-06 stood quietly. With its arms held akimbo by large mechanical restraining bolts secured through its wrists into the giant scaffold, shoulder clamps were being lowered into place.  
Stripped of most of its armor, it looked pathetically emaciated. More even than another Evas might, since Unit-06 still lacked much of the physical bulk of its fully matured cousins. With its nearly faceless head slouched minutely forward, its gray flesh was half  
exposed beneath the meshwork of inlaid avionics boxes and controlling electronics. In the cavity of its abdomen, the large dull red orb lay exposed to the world. This Eva was nothing but a skeleton with a potbelly.

"To think the United State of America is wasting its money building THIS." Valentine said half to himself. His views weren't exactly secret.

Hanging from cranes and lying on gigantic pallets down below, large sections of the Evangelion's exterior armor were being readied for attachment. Completed only recently themselves, the orange and yellow primer paint of each piece still glittered with wet newness over exposed polycarbon gray. Black painted schematic patterns lined the curves, delineating locations of various structural hard points and access ports along the armor's surface.

"I thought Major Belmont ordered you to have the ASM crews paint over the graffiti," Valentine commented from the corner of his mouth.

"Goddamn, dude, she only ordered it yesterday." Keets drawled, "We didn't get around to it yet."

Along with the schematics and the bright color scheme, the armor segments were littered with elaborately painted decorations depicting popular tattoo patterns and various aesthetic designs. Among the lines of functional script, punctuated by scrawled curses, the art work left the armor with a strangely surrealist appearance, as if the entire manufacture had burst from the mind of Salvador Dali himself.

"I don't know what Belmont's going to say," Valentine cautioned.

"You can't blame the crewers, man, they're just blowin' off steam. Kinda like nose art on fighters in World War II. After we screwed the pooch with Units -03 and -04, having a little fun on fucked-up project like Eva just barely keeps everybody's shit together. Morale, man. 'Sides, if the Boss bitches at us today, then she's a worse commander than we all thought. Even a cast iron ass like her's gotta respect karma."

"Whatever the case may be, she's under as much stress as everyone else. More, if I know her right." Shaking himself off the train of thought, he turned to Keets, "We've got about fifteen minutes left, what's the status?"

"Well, several things. Follow me, Doc." Keets gestured him to follow across the gantry, "Power source is jacking us around in more ways than one. We found external batteries on a piece of experimental gear which juiced up just fine. They took 'bout 90 nominal charge, so they'll be worth a couple a minutes in a good frisky furball. We got Unit-06's internal batteries to hold about 50 even with the leakage in the core. But... we're having electrical supply problems for our gear and the dudes at the power plant keeps radioing that they're having generator trouble because the Angel keeps knocking out subgrids in the whole complex. If the reactor scrams over there for any reason, we're left high and dry. We set up the auxiliary diesel generators, but I need your approval to cut us off from the power plant to use 'em."

"Don't hesitate," Valentine answered, "we can't really afford taking those sorts of chances."

Keets nodded, "Cool, hang a sec', okay?" walking to the side of the gantry, he cupped his hands at his mouth and shouted down toward the floor of the cage, "Yo, Melborne-babe, crank up the juice!"

"You got it!" Melborne shouted back. A moment later, several diesel engines revved to life, sending vibrations across the gantry. Lighting throughout the vast cage seemed to brighten.

Keets turned back to Valentine, the two of them continuing to walk along the gantry way, "In the good news department, we're getting the armor hooked up faster than expected."

Valentine nodded, glancing through the gantry at his feet.

"Also, we found a real entry plug stashed in storage, along with some plug suits. I sent someone to the infirmary with a plug suit for our pilot. You may wanna take a look at the plug, just to see what you think. Crews are hoisting it up as we speak."

"That's good, anything else?"

Keets thought for a second, "Oh yeah, one real bad trip. Unit-06's internal power relays are incomplete." They had come to the end of the gantry. Leaning over the railing, Keets lifted his arm and pointed toward the floor, "Check it out."

Valentine's eyes followed his hand. He gasped when he saw what was nestled on a pallet below, "Christ. you've got to be kidding."

"No way, dude. Here's the shit. The RP-2 interlock node went back to Germany a couple days ago for adjustments. That," he said, gesturing again, "is the only thing we got with the specs necessary to close the circuitry. We have batteries, but that's the only thing  
that'll connect 'em with the core."

"This situation just keeps getting worse."

"Yeah, dude," Keets responded with a laugh, "Only piece of equipment we've got could blow us off the map. Bummer, huh?"

Eyes fixed on a clean white hospital ceiling, a young girl began to steel herself for she knew not what.

-Don't worry,- she assured herself, -they'll come for you soon enough. But, what do I do if the plug is like that other place? What will I have left?-

There was liquid there, she remembered of that distant place. Darkness, silence mixed with a tasteless fluid that was neither warm nor cold. There was no feeling, not even the slightest. For a moment, the walls had seemed close, until her eyes lost their frame of reference in the emptiness. Her motionless arms were suspended at her sides. Fingers and toes that obeyed no commands were far away, as if disconnected from the trunk of her immobile body.

-Focus,- she had told herself, a Call to Arms that had long maintained her tatter of life. -Focus-  
As the shadows crept in, her senses fleeing, she turned for shelter inward. -Focus, focus, focus.- The throbbing of her heart, the only beacon of her continued existence, sent little pulses of strength through vessels twining the length of her domain. With each beat, she could feel the warmth of her internal flow, verifying where her boundaries were, learning with each pulse that she had not yet departed. It was the one companion that kept her sane. The one friend that could still answer her cries for help.  
She pooled all her awareness to the middle of her being, forming a sense of existence at one point in the core of her body. At that single point, she was separated from the shadows. Shielded from fate. Shrouded in the last threads of comfort. Insulated, safe.  
Safe, for a time.  
In the depths of nothing, robbed of sense, she dropped below the passage of time. Each heart beat stretched out. Each rhythm of her focus drew taut. Each fiber of her being begged for attention. Still, she persevered, knowing that the instant she did not, nothing  
would be left to save.  
The gaps in continuity growing longer and longer, her focus of self wavered but slightly. -Must stay focused- she told herself, thinking back to an age old promise made more than once. Amid the pauses in the ticking of her internal clock, darkness began to impinge. It forced its way through the holes, widening them toward gulfs, despite all her best resistance.  
Slowing. A beat every twenty count. Slowing far too far. Until at last all that endured was a tiny bauble of awareness suspended somewhere in an impregnable void. No light, no sense, no pulse.  
-I'm alone.- she had finally known. In the end, everything had withered away, leaving nothing but an insensate limbo. There was nothing, no doctors, no friends, no father, no comforting love, not even promise of a sad tear or hint of a heart beat. Forced to retreat out of whatever light there might have been, she could never move from this tiny point again. Existence had dissolved from around her, leaving a world of absolute void.  
No movement. Only Emptiness.  
-Am I finally dead?-  
A shadow of something, just beyond her ability to sense, whisked past her. A tiny delicate touch, so insubstantial as to not be there, brushed against her for just a moment. Dancing toward her, then away again, it was gone. There was no answer to her wondering, no concern, just a hint that there was something hidden beyond the veil of dark. She could feel that notion of presence, leering out at her across the gulf, in the core of her cognizance. A shadow that she couldn't pierce, something waited. Waiting, just beyond where she could reach, knowing that she was still fading. It dallied there, watching her motionless, insensate, dissolving being, knowing that she could never flee.  
Reflected back at her in the pool of nothing, it was all that was left.  
-Jane Wise slips toward the abyss,- she felt her shadow say, -no one to remember, or believe that she ever existed.-  
-NO!- she had wanted to scream, denying the inevitable truth.  
-Robbed of her glimmering movement, she is nothing. Disconnected from the whole, she means nothing. Why fight when there is nothing left to defend. No ground is left to give.-  
-NEVER!!!-  
...i promised...  
but she was still fading.

Then, Mercifully, the bubble had ruptured, hands of medical technicians and engineers fishing her from the emptiness back to her lonely room. Forcing the nightmare to end. Pushing it into memory. Her father was waiting there to comfort her, in her little world  
without movement. Waiting there to hold her in his arms and warm away the chill with a long hug. He had waited for her in that cheerless lab place, all those months ago.

Yet, in the intervening time, she had slipped closer to the darkness.

Lying immobile in her bed, Jane Wise dreaded that the waking dream told nothing but the truth.

"Yes Sir, It definitely wobbled that time!" Elston reported, looking up from his display. Whenever they were hit by low fire, the Angels stumbled slightly, as if kicked lightly in their backward knees. No harm done by the defenders, but the Angels did pause.

Teneyl wiped cold sweat from his eyes, the frigid wind hitting him through his open window, "Finally, some sort of a weakness." Clicking on the general comm, he said, "All fighters, all artillery target the legs. We've got to knock 'em down if we can."

"Yes, sir!" came the harried reply.

Teneyl watched and cringed as another fighter was knocked from the air by those gigantic whirling hands, "Any survivors?" He asked.

"Spotters say no parachutes. That's another Rafale to add to those two Eagles twenty seconds ago." Then Elston stopped, listening intently to his radio, "Sir, we've got the B-1B flights coming in."

"It's about goddamned time!" switching over to the flight comm, "B-1 commander, this is General Teneyl, Military commander of Ft. Tenacity. What's your position?"

The radio link crackled, then spoke in a clear female voice, "Major Treshkova. We are 90 seconds south west, cruising five hundred knots at two thousand feet -just above cloud cover."

"Perfect positioning!" the general exclaimed to himself.

"Sir?" The B-1 flight commander was uncertain.

"You're already on line for the attack I had in mind. What are you armed with?"

"Eight planes, fully loaded with 500 lb. iron bombs."

"Good, stay on your heading! I want you and your flight to attack these coordinates," he then recited a GPS position that was roughly in the midst of the cluster of Angels. "Use only one bomb apiece, and do not drop below cloud cover. They don't seem to attack stuff hidden above the clouds. I'll get back to you as soon as we see if his works."

"They, sir?"

"Yes... the Angels! Now please attack the damn target, Teneyl out!"

"Yes Sir!" responded the B-1 commander.

Teneyl gazed intently at the enemy, holding his breath as he watched another tank get squashed. So unstoppable was this juggernaut that he was rapidly running out of time and ammunition to accomplish his mission. His casualty rate continued to escalate despite the best tactics he could invent. In his heart, he wanted to ask the remainder of his troops to flee, except for the feelings of cowardice and betrayal such thoughts elicited. -We have to defend that blasted toy. No matter what the circumstances,- Teneyl told himself, he would finish his mission, even if he had to die trying. Watching his enemies like a hawk, Teneyl prayed frantically that this ploy would work.

"Sir," Elston said, tapping his arm, "Spotters are detecting more Electromagnetic fluctuations."

Clicking on the general comm, Teneyl shouted, "Fire in the hole!"

A moment later, the B-1Bs roared past, invisible above the cover of dense clouds. Blossoming like fiery flowers, explosions erupted at the Angels' feet. Visible shock waves thundered through the surrounding ground like tidal ripples in the prairie scrub. Teneyl felt a surge of heat lick his face as he closed his eyes against the moderate flash of the five hundred pound bombs.

Fortuitously, the Angels picked the same moment to fire. Their own shots flying wide, Teneyl saw at least five of the Angels stumble in the blast. To his dismay, not one of the towering monsters lost its footing.

"Damn! Goddammit!!" Teneyl cursed. "What's the damage?"

Listening to his headset, Elston shook his head, "At least their shots went wild when the bombs hit. Only two tanks lost that time. Spotters two and three say the Angels barely staggered. I don't think that blast was focused enough."

"That shoots the effectiveness of a carpet bombing to hell."

"Yes, sir. Unfortunately."

"At least now we know 500 lb. bombs won't cause them to pull their reproduction trick again. I wish someone would hurry the fuck up and invent an N3 mine!" Catching himself, Teneyl exclaimed, "Well then, we'll just have to up the ante one more time."

Gathering his breath, the general spoke to the B-1 flight again, "Major Treshkova, You almost got 'em... it's just that your bombs aren't quite powerful enough. There is one final tactic I can use you for. Bad news is it's a one shot deal and it'll be a little hairy for  
you bomber jocks."

"We're in the military," the B-1 commander replied, "tell us what you want and we'll deliver."

"First, those planes have terrain following options, right?"

"Yes, sir: Mach 1.5 on the deck." Treshkova's voice crackled back.

"How high is the 'deck'?"

"'Bout 50 feet over this terrain," she responded with pride.

"All right major," he said grimacing to himself, "I was hoping you'd say that. Here's what I want: Turn around, wherever you are... drop down onto the deck and accelerate to your maximum speed. Set all of your detonators at their touchiest setting -you know the kind, hit it with a hammer and it goes off- then, I want you to steer your bombers into the legs of the targets. Please, please, eject before you reach terminal point. Since there are eight  
of you, and twelve targets, I want each of you to number off against every other Angel accept the last four. They're arrayed like a big V... as you can see on your Tac displays. You're north-east of 'em, so if you nail 'em from the front straight to the knees you should be able to take down one Angel per plane. Make sure your planes hit low, the lower the better."

There was silence from the B-1 commander for a moment, "You DO want us to eject, right.?"

"Yeah, I think I said so! I know this is an unusual order, but you just got done telling me how ready to serve you are. I'm running out of time and ideas, so if you know anything else, say it now or forever hold your peace."

"No, sir!" the B-1 pilot returned, "we're damned proud to show how good we are! Your wish is my personal pleasure!"

"Thank you major... this may be our last chance at slowing them down, so make it good."

"You got it." She responded, ending with a snappy, "Treshkova out, Sir!"

General Teneyl strained his eyes trying to see the direction from which the bombers would be coming. It was a futile thought; he hadn't seen where the bombers were when they dropped their first volley. Additionally, they would be coming on at better than the speed of sound, which meant they would probably have completed their attack before he ever even heard them, depending on their direction of approach.

"All air support," Teneyl said through the flight comm, "we have eight B-1Bs coming in at Mach 1+ from the north-east; clear that corridor so that we don't get anyone tangled up in the blow through.

"Artillery," he continued, "The B-1Bs will be passing right over your heads, so silence your fire until we see what happens."

There was no response from the Artillery commander, but the cannon shots went quiet ten seconds later. A cold breeze prevailing from the north west brushed through Teneyl's window, causing him to shiver despite the warmth of the C&C Humvee and his field issue parka. Slipping his gloves on, he rubbed his hands together in an attempt to ward off the anxious chill. Every time he exhaled, he could feel a touch of frost on his breath as a cloud of steam rose before his face. Teneyl crossed his fingers.

Another fighter was smacked from the sky in the lull, its burning fragments strewn almost to the horizon.

"Another F-22 down," glancing toward Teneyl, Elston continued, "Do you think this will work, General?"

"I really don't know," Teneyl answered in a gruff voice, trying to minimize his uncertainty.

Issuing not the slightest noise during their passage, the B-1Bs flew like ghosts. At least, that was the point of a super-sonic attack: flying faster than the speed of sound, a bomber could reach its target before the pent-up sound waves of its shrieking jet did. Teneyl had met a grunt once who literally pissed his pants in joint service combat drills when a pair of F-22's, approaching from his blind side, had screamed over his head at an altitude of twenty feet doing Mach 1.3. Even though it made for a lot of laughs, everybody in the brigade was looking over their shoulders for the next week. A B-1B could do the same thing, except that it might also drop twenty or thirty 500 pound bombs in the process.

Tracing the line of the horizon, Teneyl thought he saw a dust plume rising in the north. It might have been a B-1, since the planes sometimes kicked up dust in their ground effect shock waves during low level flight. Teneyl, certain from experience that his eyes were playing tricks, dismissed the vague sign as a figment of his imagination. In one of his first war games as a commander, Teneyl had made the disastrous mistake of believing he could see B-1s approaching. Spending that distant evening jumping at shadows, he long promised himself not to associate errant winds with ethereal fighters, nor to shoot down flocks of geese thinking he was firing on B-1Bs or stealthier B-2s.

"There!" Elston pointed.

Suddenly, the dull sky turned brilliant white. The first angel at the far west end of the advancing enemy line went head over heels, feet flying straight up into the air in a shower of dirt. Multiple bursts of fire rose up around the fallen Angel, fragments of flaming debris streaking on their original southwesterly course through the air at several hundred miles per hour. A half second later, the impact reached Teneyl, causing the ground to reverberate like the face of a drum. The powerful concussion blast arrived almost a heartbeat later through the air, accompanied by the shriek of the jet's supersonic wake. A thunderous crescendo of further sonic booms rose in percussive accompaniment, leading the earth to jiggle like pudding. Several more Angels, roughly every other in the line, were  
upended by the same sort of mysterious force, each with a spectacular commotion of fireworks and flying fragments. One of the overturned Angels even managed to snag a compatriot on the way down, tripping that Angel as well. Each Angel hit the ground with impressive force, causing debris to toss high into the air along each and every ridge line visible.

Moments later, while he massaged his aching ears, Teneyl could still feel the Humvee's shocks absorbers bouncing. A wall of black smoke now rose to cover the entire western sky. Mingling with the drab clouds, the smoke added an acrid hint to the dirty gray day.

Clicking on the general comm, Teneyl spoke madly into his headset, "Spotters, are there any parachutes?! Did the crews make it out?!"

"Sir, we count 29, no 30 'chutes. There might've been an 31st, but we lost visual on it when the fireball came up. Rescue choppers are on their way in now."

"Yes!" Elston cheered; probably all eight of the B-1 crews had survived, "That was great! Well done!"

Teneyl gave him a weary smile, and the driver, Sgt. Engels, made a thumbs up.

"Targets have gone silent!" a spotter called.

With nine lying on the ground, none of the targets moved. Instead the three standing Angels stood by dumbly as their compatriots began to sort themselves out.

"That should buy us a minute or two," Elston commented happily.

"Not long enough to figure out what to do next," Teneyl replied, his dark attitude not displaced by the minor victory. "Belmont is running out of time."

Copyright 1999 Gregory P. Smith


	2. Section 2

(Section 2)

"Good news Major," McClellan's soft, rough voice announced to Belmont's feet, which protruded from beneath the card table as she helped Toho plug data feeds into a distributor node, "I've got the A7 Mainframe slotted to link the Eva and three other machines."

Raina Stormcloud was at his shoulder, fingering the miniature dreamcatcher she wore at her throat, "And, we've managed to scare up programming for everything in here. We can have a synchrograph from the diagnostic set Toho found, as well as an equipment status monitor and a neural linkage matrix monitor with two of the lap tops."

Belmont wrestled herself out from beneath the card table, brushing her hands off as she came to her feet, "Good."

"McClellan, the major and I scrounged up the linkage nodes you asked for," Toho added, her petite form leaned back against the window of the foreman's booth. The tiny booth, with its associated catwalk, was now strewn with so much equipment that walking had become a trial.

Below them, the Eva was almost as fully garbed in orange and yellow armored plates as it would be in the twenty minutes allotted for the job. From the vantage point of the foreman's booth, Unit-06 seemed to hang its head as the massive shoulder clamps kept it  
from tumbling limply forward onto its face.

"That's what I was hoping for. Major," McClellan nodded drearily, turning to Belmont, "Thanks for making sure it got done."

"My technical knowledge is practically useless at the moment," Belmont shrugged, "And, I always hated commanders who just lorded over everything. So," She sighed, "is there anything else that needs done?"

"We're almost ready here, Sir. All we need is an Eva and a pilot."

"Don't remind me," she said to herself, "I've got some other things I have to check up on. When Avery reappears, have him set up to monitor the synchrograph. Toho, you have the equipment status board, and Stormcloud, since you're our Neural linkage expert, you manage Matrix status. McClellan," she continued, turning, "you watch the gateway on the mainframe."

"Yeah, you got it major," McClellan commented vaguely. Stormcloud tipped her head and Toho nodded. They all knew what was needed.

Brushing through the door, Belmont said over her shoulder, "I'll be back shortly."

Moving to the nearest downward ladder, she cinched the volume on her headset until she could hear that Valentine was still rambling in her ear, "... ignore me if you want, but we really, really need you down here, Alexandra."

"I heard you the first time," she replied. "Not like I can just drop everything the instant you need something."

"It might've been better if you had," he grouched.

"Just hold your horses," she said, putting her hands on the ladder to start down toward the main gantry. "I'm on my way."

"Good," he responded shortly, "meet me on the far side of the second level walkway." Then the radio clicked off.

"Pushy bastard," Belmont thought to herself for the zillionth time. She slipped the headset away from her ears; Valentine always tended to talk just a little loudly whenever he was on a comm link. Far away the battle progressing against the Angel crackled and  
rumbled. In the past few minutes, the sounds of explosions had grown markedly closer.

Before she managed to actually start down the ladder, Lt. Wise appeared, his face flushed from running. Belmont dropped her gaze as he approached.

"Well?" She asked, as shortly as she could.

"Jane'll do it," he said, a pain in his eyes.

"Very well," she started to turn away, "Valentine has more problems. I have to get going..."

"Listen," he stopped her, "Just wait a second. You know I have to ask."

Still, she did her best to look at her feet, feeling suddenly like a tiny child.

"Please don't put my daughter in the belly of that beast."

"I wish I had a choice," she responded, not attempting to see his expression.

"Just look me in the face for once and say it;" he insisted, "This is my daughter who's life we're toying with." She could hear the quiver in his speech.

"Do you actually want me to use McClellan in her place? You know he wouldn't stand a chance," she could not lift her gaze. "Jane is the only one who might survive it. If she chose to do it, I have no right to stop her."

"You know she would never turn it down. I have to step in for her."

Deeply silent, Belmont had hoped she would not be confronted with this situation. But, as a Deer stuck in a headlight beam, she could not turn away. Distant rolling thunder, the chorus of a spring rain, reverberated delicately through the gigantic chamber. An insistent promise.

"Major... Alex... I can't permit this," He was vehement.

The use of that name stung. At that point her eyes came up, a welling of ancestral duty filling her void, "In which world would you have her living? The hopeless one? She has less to lose than any of us. We have no chance without her, and she follows fate without us. As much as I hate it, I have to guide us down this path. That, or we're ALL dead."

"It would take a miracle to make this work!"

"But less of one if Jane is the pilot," she told him, throat bitter with horrified bile at having actually spoken the words. "You know I feel no better than you about this. Except my hands are tied. I'm damned already -what is there left to save?" Having said everything that would come to mind, she started down the ladder.

"Goddamn it Alex!" Wise began, reading what was in her thoughts, "It was never your fault-"

Her eyes flashing, in a very un-military manner she snapped around, "DON'T CALL ME THAT FUCKING NAME!"

Leaving a bewildered Lt. Wise in her wake, she turned harshly away, trying with a touch of success to quell the reflexive tears. Feeling so tired, only a single drop fell as she descended the ladder, forming a minuscule mote of wetness at her lapel. Her arms and  
legs wanted to stop moving, just give up and stop. She felt she wanted to fall, just to give up let gravity take her down. Yet she could not. Despite all else, she had to keep going for everyone's sake but her own. By the time she reached the second level walkway of the gantry, her face was empty of the vague expression she had fought so hard to control just moments before. -The strongest Will on the entire base, and she can only offer solace if  
the questions have yes or no answers,- Belmont reminded herself, -if nothing else, I have to trust that her strength is greater than mine.-

Striding with purpose along the catwalk, Belmont centered her eyes on the far end to keep from reminding herself just how close she was to the monster in the scaffold. With a heavy heart and a wavering desire, she could feel it now more than ever; the huge, mute, lifeless eyes casting down on her, boring into her soul as only she could feel. In its silence, she could hear its music as clearly as a sister's voice. More clearly.

Pushing away the leaden feeling, she emptied her mind of a decade's worth of grief, pressing through the busy crowd until she finally found Dr. Valentine. Keets stood next to the doctor, half lounging against the railing of the gantry with exaggerated ease. Valentine himself had his arms crossed and was pacing the width of the grated walkway.

"Yo Major!" Keets called, nodding his head in greeting, "just tellin' Doc how much -06 looked like a fucked up booze hound that crawled out of a yakuza tattoo parlor and into a circus tent. I think the clowns were taking turns..."

"Oh please," Belmont ignored the intentionally abrasive talk, "Haven't you got anything better to do before that angel gets here?"

"He does not," Valentine interjected sharply. "At least until you take a look at my latest problem."

Belmont shrugged, "Okay. What?"

Without saying anything, Valentine gestured with his hand over the railing.

Hanging in space, suspended by cables from one of the automated cranes, -It- brooded darkly. A big black cauldron shape, two men tall, surmounted by a huge hexbolt structure and dozens of vein-like arterioles, the thing cast a shadow over all the other activity in the chamber. Stenciled on its ugly side in bold white lettering were the words, "Type II Prototype S2 Engine Interlock."

"As you can see, Major," Valentine began, "we have a serious power source dilemma, even though installation will take two minutes."

Belmont looked at him in shock, "Are you out of your mind?! You want to put that thing in and complete Unit-06's S2 engine?"

"The RP-2 supplement interlock went back to Germany for reworking. The only thing we have that can channel power from batteries and external sources to the Eva's core systems is that... conduit... there," he pointed at the thing hanging from the cables. "We can't use Eva-06 without it."

"What about Nevada?" She asked.

"What about it? The S2 engine that destroyed Division 2 was a non-integrated design," Valentine shrugged, as if to explain away all past laments.

"I know that. And the core designs are exactly the same! This one might be just as unstable. It was here for testing only. We don't know if it works."

"Most of the S2 was built straight into Unit-06 in order to try out mass production techniques. As you know, nine other units are currently in the infant stages of construction. The guts are already in our girl. Plugging the interlock in just connects it all to the system. You want to abort the operation now?" there was a serious expression on doctor's sweaty face.

Belmont's head reeled. Jane Wise, S2, Eva, everything that was falling on her shoulders jogged around her cerebrum. Finally, she declared softly, "What choice is there? We plug it in and hope it doesn't blow up in our faces..."

"Dude..." Keets exclaimed.

A world the size of a shoe box, four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Five of those surfaces were invisible presences only to eyes that would not turn far enough in their sockets to catch a glimpse. Steady tapping of passing feet located the floor. Those floors were made of tile in the adjoining hallway weren't they? Foot noise reflected off invisible vertical surfaces that corralled on all sides. Those were the walls, surely hidden by freestanding medical equipment. From the overall direction of the people sounds, the shape of a door was readily discernible. It was a familiar door, existing in visual memory as part of a frame seen from a reclined angle. Gurney wheels squeaking, she'd been through the door many times. And then there was the section of ceiling she could see directly above her, illuminated by a single pale fluorescent light. The lonely sun of her cubicle universe.

What a thought: her whole life bolted to a three by three foot patch of an inverted surface. In the middle was her little TV, whose channels she could not change and whose video player she could not operate. Beside it, her Kitten-hanging-from-a-string poster was hung slightly crooked on this latest sky, its edges so often stapled that they were beginning to fray. A single channel TV and an old poster, the extent of her worldly possessions.

-'Hang in there, baby,'- she read from the poster.

Still, there was a reproducible familiarity. Above her head, where she could not see, the heart monitor beeped softly in echo of the repetitive rhythms emanating from the depths of her chest. She could scent the odor of alcohol along with a tangy taste of medications. The plastic shell of her artificial lung clenched constantly at her waist, torso and neck, its hardness beginning to rub bedsores into a slightly twisted shoulder. Through her mouth, breath not her own sighed away in mechanical exactness, each cycling taking precisely five seconds. Five days, ten months, twenty years, she had lost count how long life had been this way.

Such was her corporeal world.

-Last chance to not give it all up,- she thought.

The female nurse spoke again, "Are you ready Jane? Your father instructed that you were not to be moved without your consent."

-There can be no turning back. Is this my last chance?- Jane's eyes flicked up and down, responding a decisive -Yes.-

"Okay," the nurse told her, turning to someone beyond Jane's field of vision, "Bring in the portable respirator. Let's get her ready."

A respirator mask that smelled strongly of disinfectant was lowered over her nose and mouth, its elastic band secured around the back of her head. Bodies moved at the edges of her vision. She could feel the scraping of fingers popping loose the catches on the Plexiglas shell of the artificial lung. Suddenly, the top half of her breathing apparatus was gone, no longer pressing at her sternum. The shell was lifted up away from her, permitting her to see it for once.

She had a moment of controllable anxiety when her lungs did not draw their next breath as scheduled. One way or another, they no longer moved on their own anymore.

-Three bodies,- Jane decided as someone finally turned on the respirator cupping her mouth, forcing her chest to recommence its slow rising and falling. -Two orderlies and a nurse,- she knew, recognizing the sounds of each individual breathing pattern from memory. While the nurse and one orderly stood to her sides, within her visual arc, she could not see the third. She also couldn't see what their hands were doing. Had one been wearing glasses, the reflections there would have been telling. Her ears ever attentive, informing her attendants were all breathing more rapidly than usual. Almost to the point of gasping. Were they afraid? What made them afraid?

Listening to the sounds of the distant battle beyond the voices of the nurses, she tried to decide what element of the situation scared her most. Outside the walls of her minute pocket of comprehension, a war was a formless entity that meant nothing. Jane did not know of Angels and Evas. Did the Angel have big, white feathery wings? Did it wear a halo? There were a dozen questions she wanted badly to ask, but couldn't. The inability to ask questions was the most frightening thing she knew about.

"Let's remove these leads. We have to have her totally disconnected to put on the plugsuit."

Knowing what was to come next, Jane focused her eyes on the ceiling light. Distant cylindrical light, as warm as it was cool, hummed away quietly under the massage of electrical energy. -Casting tiny shadows on the ceiling, I am the light.-

-The light,- a streak of pain lanced down her arm, accompanied by a ripping sound. Medical tape pulled away. -Happy glow, inside and out.- more streaks of pain, abrasive though distant. -Bring light for all.- torching pain, a big wriggling worm bulging out, seeking to escape the crook of her elbow. Slithering from her arm, warm, pulsing the timing of her heart, -Nothing but a distant light.- fingers pressing with bruising harshness at her arms and legs, wrestling things from the inside out. A colony of parasites fleeing a sinking ship.

IVs, monitor leads, blunt fingers on strong hands, Jane's focus was barely good enough to keep the senses distant. Surgical tape holding the tubes that kept her eyes moist was pulled away, ripping several stray lashes from her unblinking eyelids. Tears escaped across her face despite her staunch denial.

Spotting the tears, the nurse leaned close, "Your eyes are drying out already?" Her hand came up carrying a bottle of eye drops.

-No.- Jane tried to say, though the nurse was in too much of a hurry to notice.

-No, Please, no!- The thing came in, hovering like a needle about of be punched into her cornea. -No.- she could not protest, unable to make the nurse understand the misunderstanding. Painful drops of wetness fell down, sending her vision swimming, begging her muscles for the reflex to blink. First one eye and then the other, until Jane's vision was a splash of senseless color.

Staring out into a blur, Jane felt the liquid run out across her face in streams, skirting the edge of the breathing mask. -I forgive you, I forgive you.- she repeated in her silence, trying to believe that the nurse had meant nothing by the act.

Exploring fingers pulled at the ties of her hospital robe, removing her only clothing. Touching her chest and legs, pulling away more tape and sensors. Touching her with rough immodesty where it would be considered a crime with a normal teen. Touching her.

Jane focused away again, once more using her only remaining weapon. -A good memory for a bad one.-

-My god Sport!- her father's laughing voice echoed over the corridors of time. -I got you that video yesterday. How do you know all that?-  
She leapt and spun, muscles aching in a pleasant way. Gravity barely holding her to the ground, a six year old in the process of discovery. -Look at me, Daddy!- the Pirouette forming of its own accord, sweeping on into a leap with her hands positioned just right. She did not know the names of the movements, but that never mattered.  
-Christ! A six year old performing what took Baryshnikoff years to learn. But honestly,- he teased, -you should probably try focusing on female ballet technique!-  
She remembered the big congratulatory hug.

Finally the catheters came out and hands were gone, leaving the open air to touch her naked body. She could feel where the cotton swabs pressed against the wounds resulting from her preparation. Cool drafts caressed against her skin as people circulated around her. She ignored the ache. At least her vision was once again clear.

"Lift her up, let's get her dressed. We don't have much time before the Angel gets here." The nurse instructed.

More gently, hands wrapped mushy gauze over the holes in her limbs, covering where she had been invaded. Finally, they lifted her legs, steering them into a piece of clothing that Jane could not move to see. They lifted her sequentially, gradually pulling the robing up along her waist toward her neck. Her arms were maneuvered through openings in the garb, her fingers gently teased until they fit into velvety gloves. Through the soft fabric, she could feel segments of plastic sculpted to follow the lines of her shoulders, chest, waist, back and legs. Once they fastened the garb along her back and about her neck, somebody lifted her wrist, applying an almost invisible pressure to a bracelet that fit there. With a quiet hiss, the clothing shrank skin tight around her entire body, urging her gently to forget her pain.

"Much better," the nurse commented, "has to feel more comfortable than all that life support gear." Then she turned to the orderlies, "Move her to the gurney, we have to take her to the Cage right away."

Jane was amazed for an instant that what the nurse had said was true; it had been a long while since she felt so free.

-Is this free?-

In an instant, they lifted and transferred her onto the solid cart. Jane could hear the respirator sitting next to her, drawing her each breath with the mechanical punctuality of a Swiss clock. She looked one last time at the Kitten poster hanging over her bed, her domain. -Good-bye Boots,- she bade the Kitten as the orderlies wheeled her  
out.

Coasting beneath the door frame, wheels rattling with a soft though persistent squeak, Jane watched the ceiling of her little universe disappear. At once, the familiar equipment sounds and lighting were gone, consumed behind a drone of increased noise. Shepherded by an orderly who hovered above her head, Jane felt the cart nudged hastily along the hallway. -Where is this place?- she asked herself, not a regular patron of the corridor. Only when the orderlies transported her across the ward for her bimonthly MRI examinations did she frequent this foreign vista. To her the experience was akin to what another felt traveling in an airliner, looking down on a familiar world from an open sky.

The ward was in full motion. People in white coats flashed past at the edges of her vision, leaving wakes of air that washed over her like wavelets on an ocean shore. She could hear many different set of lungs, breathing laboriously, connected to bodies that jerked about as sharply as frightened deer. They shouted back and forth across the ward, using opaque jargon terms like, "Stat," "Asap," "Charge the Defib, 200 millijoules!" Jane didn't know what was being said; medical stuff had never made sense. What was worse, in all the time she was bedridden, she had never felt a medical ward so active.

She wanted so badly to sit up for just a moment. Just the tiniest barest second, sitting on her own, holding her head up, to get a quick look to see what was going on. But she remained fixed, despite all impulses and desires, a permanent hostage of gravity. Counting her breaths, she put down the welling of frustration, focusing her attention to a point in her abdomen as the respirator hammered out each cycling of air. She felt the slight locus of heat, wishing that she could directly control her inhalations and exhalations. She could not use the technique to the fullest extent of her ability. Yet, it did keep her sane, despite all else.

"Good luck Jane! Do us proud Jane!" people told her as she was wheeled past. She could not see most of the faces that spoke to her, each one disappearing from the corner of her eye before she could look in the appropriate direction.

-Doing what?- she asked silent, fighting an array of emotions -Luck doing what? How can I help you when I don't have a clue what's happening? You want me to pilot an Eva to fight an Angel. But what exactly is an Eva? What's an Angel for that matter? And, how could I, of all people, be any help? What if... what if the entry plug is like that other place?- She felt anxious and excited with a hint of fear, but mastered it all by focusing her mind elsewhere.

Behind the forbidding wonders, Jane silently envied a high keening shriek of agony that formed the soprano of a spectral choir reflecting along the walls of the hallway. What a pair of billowing leathery lungs that would've taken. To make such a noise. -Wish I could trade you.- To be able to breathe again at her own whim. What a fondly impossible desire screaming was to one who hadn't produced even the slightest sound in almost a year.

For Jane, locked in a permanent torpor, with the beating of her heart and the cycling of her respirator as her only measures, time had no concrete dimension. Morning, noon or night, she sometimes didn't know, sleeping when she grew tired, yearning for a meal beyond the tubes that had pumped nutrition straight into her veins, then cleansed her blood directly. How long was twenty-five minutes? When would the angel finally attack the lab? When did they want her to do whatever it was she was supposed to do?

She managed to control her instinctive dread despite the flash of abysmal darkness.

If nothing else, this ceiling was more interesting than the one above her bed. While she loved the poster of Boots, and probably would never have survived without the constant friend made by her little television, it didn't take long to grow bored of looking at the same three foot expanse all the time. Though her father often insisted that she be moved between rooms on a relatively frequent basis, the ceilings usually looked much the same after two or three weeks of continual comparison. Evidence of the effort on his part made her feel a little happier at times; it was the thought that counted, wasn't it?

-So many lights here, so bright- she thought, watching the florescent ceiling lights flick past one after another, coming from the direction of her feet and leaving well beyond her range of vision above her head. Was it daylight out? Maybe there were windows that she couldn't see. Jane abandoned that thought before it formed; glass sounded different than plaster. There was very little glass here. From her vantage point, she could not gauge the length of the corridor, knowing only that it had discontinuous walls from the echoes she sometimes heard made by the wheels of her gurney. From the broken echoes, she could sense open doorways at intervals. Every so often, the cart would turn, causing the light bars to rotate ninety degrees or so. Then they would be going down another hallway that looked identical to the last.

Gradually, almost more slowly than could easily be perceived,Jane sensed a shift in the people noises gravitating around her. Men and women still shouted jargon around her, but the texture changed. The noises here were less shrieks of pain and more whining of tools. Decor became stale, almost dead. Perhaps they were passing though the morgue?

-I must not be in the medical ward anymore,- she realized. Making five turns and traveling for much longer than expected, Jane was finally wheeled across a thick metal doorway into a vast room where the ceiling disappeared into distant steel rafters lined  
with flood lights and thick conduits. To Jane, where the ceiling was always a wall no more than five or six feet away, the cavern rising away from her was like traveling into a separate universe. Spot lights shined down like distant stars. Not that she had seen stars recently.

At once, the ambient noise became spread out across the vast emptiness, hinting at open depth the size of a sporting arena. Or bigger. The cart bumped to a stop on the rough metallic surface.

"Hold on, they're here!"

-Dad?!- Jane knew by the sound of the voice.

"About goddamn time!" someone else called. For a moment, Jane thought it might be Dr. Valentine, but wasn't certain. "Get her up here."

Dozens of people moved about on the metal grate floor. Jane could feel hints of perspiration as they passed, the odors of fear tainted by intense effort. Machine smells were everywhere too; ozone, grease, rusted steel and... something else. She picked out  
her father's footsteps as he approached.

"Sport!" he made an effort to smile when he came into her visual arc. She could see how tired he was. His eyes were a little red. "Look at you! All the machines are gone now."

-Is this free?- Jane wondered again, thinking about darkness and robotics labs and places she didn't really want to visit again.

Father bent down and hugged her, carefully watching the respirator with his strong arms. She could feel his pulse racing where the skin of his neck touched her. "You know you don't have to do this," he whispered for her alone. "You know I'm not forcing you to do this."

When he backed away to see her response, she just looked him intensely in the eye, as if to say "Da-ad." But the words would never come.

Whether she wanted it to or not, a tear dripped from her left eye. She glanced down, trying to see where it skirted the edge of her breathing mask.

Father blinked rapidly on seeing it, then reached to brush the droplet away. "You don't have to do this, Sport. You really sure you want to?"

Jane nodded her eyes. -I won't back away, not if I can really be helpful again. I hate lying around all day more than anything in the world,- she wanted so much to say. -Yes,- was all she could manage.

"Dammit, Lt. Wise," someone shouted again, "Get her up here! We haven't got time for this."

To Jane, Father at last nodded, "Okay, but please be careful." He hugged her again before picking her up off the gurney.

"Someone grab her respirator pack for me!"

"Come on, get moving! The Angel's almost here!"

The next few moments were dizzy. In the comfort of her father's arms, Jane saw the huge Eva for the first time. Big, orange, yellow and gray. It was littered with as many curses as a concrete wall in a New York City underpass. It was as sad and helpless as she, held up by enormous hooks and gantries. Deformedly skinny beneath the plates of incomplete armor. Two of a kind.

As they walked past, someone Jane knew very well spoke. "Good luck, Jane," it was Major Belmont.

Jane strained to see the woman, strained to see her familiar blond hair and blue eyes. -Wait!- she wanted to call. But Major Belmont never came within view. All Jane was left with was gentle brush against her cheek by the unseen woman's hand. -Please talk to me!-  
never left her mouth.

"Look out, coming through."

Father climbed a ladder onto the Eva's back, carefully maneuvering with his daughter in his arms. Extended from the machine's enormous neck was a bone white tube that had a hatch on the front side.

Darkness flashed; the compartment looked just like the one from all those months ago. Jane wanted to bite her lip to put away the fear. Dr. Valentine stood before it with his arms crossed.

Someone stumbled behind them, causing a light jerking against the hose of her breath mask, "Watch that respirator. If you drop it and hurt my daughter, you will not live to regret it."

"Okay, okay."

Valentine nodded to them as they approached, "We don't have much time left, let's put her in."

"Set the respirator on the side there."

"Like that?"

"Yeah... okay, watch out."

Between them, the three men managed to get Jane maneuvered into the entry plug couch. Dr. Valentine caught Jane's eye, "Everything's going to be fine." She could tell he was lying by the flush of his face and the sweat dripping from his forehead.

"Let's get her strapped in."

"There..." restraints were quickly secured over all her limbs, the belts pulled almost tight enough to hurt.

"That'll hold her," Valentine comment as he stepped back for a moment. With a smile, seemingly out of his sleeve, he produced a pair of silvery tabs. "Watch the birdie, Jane, my girl," he applied the cool probes with deft hands to either side of her forehead. For a moment, Jane wanted to twitch at feeling the cold metal.

"We're running short on time here!" someone called from far away.

"Hold on, we're almost done," Jane's father responded.

"Here," Dr. Valentine pressed several things into her father's hands, "You have to get into the plug with her."

"What are these?" he asked.

"Okay..." Valentine leaned close to Jane and put a radio transceiver in her ear, "That comfortable?"

-Yes- Jane responded.

"You'll be able to hear what we're saying with that." Then he turned to her father, "Lieutenant, that there a mouthpiece to keep Jane from biting her lips or tongue if she gets jarred. That," he pointed to the other object, a computer chip, "is a plugsuit hardware modifier. The major was bitching at me that Jane wouldn't be able to move LCL in and out of her lungs, so that device you're holding makes the plugsuit tense up around her abdomen. Kinda like breathing, but really pretty wimpy."

"What am I supposed to do with them?" her father wondered aloud.

Valentine laughed, "Someone's gotta go into the plug with her and get that respirator off of her when we flood the chamber with LCL. As her father, you're automatically voted to do it. You put the mouthpiece in after you breathe the last of the air out of her lungs. Just use CPR technique. Then you put that chip into the plugsuit to keep her alive."

"Ah... Okay," her father nodded, a look of determination on his face, "let's do it." He stepped into the plug in front of his daughter's seat.

"Comfortable Jane?" Valentine asked from behind her father.

-Yes,- Jane replied.

"She says 'yes'," her father translated.

"Come On people!" Belmont shout across the chamber, "now or never!"

"Is the respirator in the way of the hatch?" Father asked over his shoulder.

"No," Valentine told him, reaching to set the device next to Jane in the space of the entry plug. The little breathing apparatus had not lost time in the entire trek across the base.

"Let's close this thing up," Dr. Valentine looked at a technician. Turning away, he gave an unobtrusive thumb's up that Jane could see just past her father's side. "Give 'em hell Jane!"

With a hydraulic hiss, the cylindrical section of hatch slid down from above, covering the tube's entry. Jane's father huddled against her in the cramped space, his breath rasping in her ear as he hunched close. Whoever built the thing had not intended a full sized passenger standing up. The hatch slipped into place, blocking out all vision of the world, then sealed seamlessly with an ear-popping thump.

At that moment, the tube felt suddenly cold. Secluded after a fashion. All that could be heard were the sounds of breathing and respirator. Father's pulse beat tickled where his wrist pressed lightly at her throat. Her nose wanted to twitch at the alcohol smell of the respirator mask which had chosen at last to make its presence known. Jane wanted to sneeze.

Then, with a soft hum, like the spin of a disk drive, pale fluorescent light illuminated the cylindrical chamber dimly from below. Jane and her dad waited in the shadowy, nearly silent tube.

"We'll be all right," her father said.

-Not quite like that other place,- she thought, relishing in the closeness of her father's warmth. She tried to swallow anxiously, but could not make her muscles attempt the task.

"I can't believe I'm actually relying on a little kid to save my ass..." Teneyl hissed under his breath.

"Sir?"

Shaking his head, Teneyl gave Elston self-exasperated glance. "If Belmont wants to save us," he explained, "she'd better do it damn soon."

For every attack the fighter planes made, it seemed one more was removed from the sky. In one case an Angel's gigantic hand-blade flashed open so fast that the targeted aircraft didn't even fall apart for a full second or two. When it finally did, it burst into flaming chunks that riddled an F-22 and a Rafale caught too close. The Rafale lost a section of wing in the cloud of flying debris, which immediately sent it into a tight, smoky, earthbound spiral. The F-22 lasted a heartbeat longer before it shredded its own airframe with loose turbine blades. A half second later, both aircraft flew apart like medieval fireworks. Transformed to so many blistering leaves in autumn, pieces from fighter planes sprinkling from the air, toasted to nothing, pilots and all.

"That's three more losses," Elston told him. On his screen, the casualty report reading more and more like a grocery list, "We aren't slowing them down anymore."

Teneyl nodded stiffly, listening through his headset as fighter pilots called in panic to each other. A second before, screams of horror and pain cut short as a radio ceased functioning. Just one more airman who saw his last seconds coming, only to realize he would never get home again to see his wife and child. Children! All of them Teneyl's responsibility, gradually being stripped away. And one child to do what the best in the military couldn't? Teneyl practically quivered in his boots with dread.

"Keep cutting across their path," he answered finally, his voice condemnably hoarse, "See if we can still draw them off."

"We've just lost another artillery emplacement," Elston didn't glance up.

Biting his lip, Teneyl contemplated the next course of action for more than a passing moment. He clicked on the general comm, "We're going to have to concede some property. All remaining self-propelled artillery pieces withdraw to the north ridge rally point. Abandon emplaced artillery. Evacuate the Airfield."

His mind numbly informed him that the acknowledgments were coming through, but he didn't really hear.

Major Elston was looking at him in alarm, "Sir? Abandon the airfield?"

"We have no choice Major. At this point we're going to have to fall back in order to focus our remaining efforts on the safety of the lab."

Elston's eyes were wide, "But Sir... we've got aircraft up there running out of fuel."

"Ellsworth AFB has airborne refueling platforms on the way north as we speak. At the very least, we can hope that destroying the airfield will take up enough of the target's time that Belmont can get her toy fielded." Teneyl didn't like the strategy for a second, but kept a straight face as he told it to Elston.

"What if the Angels don't stop to destroy the field?"

"After all the threat it's posed," Teneyl began, "I certainly wouldn't pass it up... especially if I considered myself to be an agent of divine retribution."

"Are they giving us retribution?" Elston asked softly.

"Can you think of any better reason why they'd be out here in ass-end North Dakota?"

Holding up his gloved hand, Elston visibly crossed his fingers, then turned back to his display.

-Amen brother,- Teneyl added to himself.

Teneyl had Sgt. Engels remove the C&C vehicle a little more than a mile to the north-east, placing them a mile and a half to the south of the large dirt mountain that marked the main complex of the research facility. Between the lab and the airfield lay two other structures that the Angels might, with luck, pause to destroy. The first was the armored cavalry motor pool, outfitted to park almost seventy tanks. The second was the dirt mound that covered Ft. Tenacity's power plant.

Untroubled by the now sporadic fire as the artillery retreated toward higher ground, the Angels continued on along the plain, each footstep bringing them closer to the air base. For its own part, the air base was a bustle of personnel scurrying for escape vehicles. The massive activity could be considered a good sign, if only all those trapped there weren't faced with imminent annihilation. Many of the remaining helicopters and trucks were taking off, streaming to safety on the open prairie. If they were lucky, all the ground crews would be gone by the time the monsters arrived.

Formed into a rhythmic marching column, the Angels showed no sign of flagging. They didn't particularly pay heed to the aircraft still swarming around them.

"Come on," Teneyl implored aloud, "Stop and take the field. Slow down and stop. Stomp all over everything there. Give Belmont just a little more time."

Dividing into two groups of roughly equal number, the Angels walked to either side of the air base, their heavy foot steps sending vibrations through the ground. Teneyl could see the depressions their feet left behind. For a long breath, he feared they would pass the field by, heading on instead to their obvious ultimate goal. They moved relentlessly until it was almost too late. Then, they suddenly stopped dead still in their tracks.

"They're gonna take it!" Elston said.

"I hope everybody's out of there," Teneyl whispered as he watched a Humvee peel through the open doors of a hanger before darting between two angelic legs in its sprint toward safety. Deliberately, paying no mind to the nuisances that zipped past them, one individual Angel each separated from the opposing groups, moving to either side of the airfield. Both halted at the edges of the runway, with all the other Angels looking on in solemn silence. The two particular Angels raised their arms as if to physically push one another from across the runway. Their gigantic serrated hands unfolded like elaborate radar dishes.

"What are they doing?" Teneyl asked himself, grabbing his trusty binoculars off the head of his Tac board. Through the open side window, he adjusted the focus for a better look. Cranking up the light gain and squinting through the eye piece, he saw nothing but stillness.

It was then that snow began to filter down from the graying clouds, leaving the dry wind to dissipate into an uneasy silence. His heart racing, Teneyl slowly lowered his binoculars. Something made his hair stand on end, some hint, some taste he failed to identify. On impulse, he dropped the binoculars, pulled off one of his gloves and quickly cranked the window closed. He found himself looking on in horrified astonishment as the air between two monsters at the sides of the runway began to glisten with a diffuse radiance.

"What are they doing?" came the awed voice of Sgt. Engels, practically the first the man had spoken during the entire battle. Elston sat dumbfounded.

Shimmering a noiseless silver in the pale luminescence of strange light, snow fell harder, accompanied by a drop in temperature that gripped Teneyl to the core. Elston shivered visibly, despite the standard issue military parka he wore. In the area between the two statuesque Angels, a glowing cloud formed, swirling like a dancing flame. Powerful electric odor -the taste of live battery leads- washed through the Humvee, ripping at the back of Teneyl's throat, causing him to sneeze. Electronic displays around the cabin flickered with broadcast interference. When the burning cloud peaked to a boil, a pin-point of obsidian black materialized at its center.

"Sea of Dirac!" the Elston gasped, having heard the description of the phenomenon from numerous reports.

"All aircraft back the hell off!! NOW!!!" Teneyl shouted into the general comm. Against the light, he could not see if any of the fighter planes were obeying the order.

A Sea of Dirac. Power beyond the imagination, brought straight from quantum nonexistence. The same power that had destroyed NERV division 2. Power humans still barely understood. Fantastic power hovering up in the grim North Dakota sky acting at the focus of an already impressive formation of energy. Destructive force that could not be counteracted by any weapon in Teneyl's arsenal.

Stoked to an impressive level by the appearance of the Dirac Sea, the radiant cloud soared upward in intensity to a blaze of piercing white, drawing sparks of lightning from the two responsible Angels. Seized under its own burning weight, the fire descended downward, consuming everything in a blast of blinding light, reducing all of the angels to unidentifiable shadows against the conflagration. Teneyl covered his eyes with a hand, unable to stand the brilliance. A dampened shock wave passed beneath them, causing the C&C vehicle to bounce lightly on its springs. As though traveling from a very long way off, a low muttering of thunder rumbled past.

Seasons switched suddenly in the cabin of the C&C vehicle, midsummer indoors despite the overcast sky outside.

When Teneyl removed his hand from his face, the Angels were standing just as before. Between the motionless figures, there was a newly formed space of vacant property. Even as a hardened, experienced General, Teneyl drew a breath of pure dread.

With the Angels standing by in the eerie light, the air base had been converted into a huge patch of charcoal. In addition, there was not a sign of the light snow that had begun falling only moments before. As far as his eyes could see, along every ridge between his vantage point and the former location of the airfield, previously frozen brush burned. Hell on earth, sipped from the core of the world and sprayed over everything. Even scrub next to the C&C burned. In addition, the Humvee's windows were scorched on the outside, as if the vehicle had just been driven through a blast furnace. When Teneyl touched the handle on the door, his hand jumped back in reflex as the metal almost burned him.

Using the hem of his parka to grip the already cooling handle, Teneyl opened the door to the open-air oven. The C&C was now a mess, its green-gray paint job singed an even black. The tires continued to burn, though not far enough through to lose pressure.

"Shit," shaking his head in true awe, Teneyl gingerly closed the door again. He loosened his coat collar against the heat, trying rapidly to think of something more that his defense force could do.

Elston was ashen, "If you hadn't... if you hadn't closed the window, we'd all be dead."

Teneyl shook the comment off, trying desperately to think, "What do they intend?"

"By god," Engels added, dabbing his hands gently against the hot steering wheel, "If that was only two Angels, I don't want to think what they can do when all twelve work together."

"Torch everything from here to Kansas, not to mention half of Canada," the Elston put in.

"But why didn't they just do it when they first appeared?" Teneyl pointed out as he shook his head.

"Sir," Elston responded, pointing toward the mountain of dirt that marked the buried research facility, "Maybe they were worried about not penetrating the lab."

The mountain, undamaged, let off a simmer of steam into the overcast sky. At the center of the blast, that Teneyl could see, there was no sign of an impact crater. It was as if the effect had flowed over the surface like a spilled liquid, incinerating everything. The gaze of God scoring this world clean.

"I don't believe it," Teneyl whispered, now understanding what the Angels intended, "the only defensive measure constructed into the lab and the Angels need to be standing up close to overcome it."

-And we need to rely on a child to stop them.- he did not add aloud.

"I can't believe we're going to try to activate an incomplete Eva with this junk," Lt. Avery commented in disbelief as he took his seat at the oscilloscope turned synchrograph.

"If you have any better ideas," Major Belmont commented from the doorway of the booth, "I'm listening."

"For twenty five minutes of work," Stormcloud mentioned from across the card table, looking up briefly from her display of the Interface matrix, "I'd like to see you do better."

Avery shrugged, "I could've done it." Before anyone could interject, he quickly continued, "Major, the egress corridor and cargo gates are all wired up. One of my guys is just sitting out there waiting for you to tell 'im to push the plunger. On your word, we can blow the side off the lab mountain."

"That's what I was hoping for. Can you handle the synchrograph?" she asked.

Nodding, Avery gave one of his most obnoxious grins, "With my eyes closed. Since we have no REM data on Jane, Doc Valentine and I'll have to write some interface parameters on the spot. Just a matter of finding her synch frequency and programming the matrix to scan for it. Shouldn't take more than a minute once everything is running."

"Assuming the Eva's internal neural structure is complete enough to know we're trying to contact it," Toho told him quietly. The small asian woman practically disappeared as she sat low in her chair.

Belmont bit her lip, knowing that there was no way of addressing that particular concern. Stormcloud answered the question instead, "If the matrix functions properly, the Eva should be able to activate. Speaking of which, Major, our paralyzed pilot can't touch the manual controls. Did Dr. Valentine install servos for us to control it from here?"

One hard question for another, Belmont would have been forced to reply if Valentine hadn't come pounding along the catwalk when he did. Huffing and puffing, he caught Stormcloud's query, "I set up servos. There are a couple technicians with a comm link to  
General Teneyl sitting just off the gantry with remote controls, waiting for us to get the Eva active."

"Who'd you get?" Stormcloud asked curiously, stroking the tiny dreamcatcher she wore.

"Oh, uh, Woodfill and Snyder," Valentine replied, waving his hand vaguely over the cage, "Sitting up there in the, uh, crane operator's box."

Stormcloud's dark eyes came up smoothly, a downward quirk flickering to her lips before she parked an accusatory gaze on Belmont. Closing her eyelids with a quietly exasperated sigh, she ventured to look again at her display. She shook her head in cynical disbelief as she held firmly to the ornament she wore around her neck.

-Raina's figured it out,- Belmont realized, staring for a long moment at Valentine. She prayed silently that no one else in the control booth would recognize the lie. Given the massive stress they were already feeling, her small crew really didn't need to know exactly how much of the situation depended on a child's mind.

"Major," Valentine turned to her, "the hatch is closing as we speak, once you contact Lt. Wise, we should be able to flood the plug."

"Good," Major Belmont returned, trying to stave off the expression that hadn't quite reached her face, "General Teneyl reports that his forces are being driven into full retreat; the Angel has completely destroyed the AFbase and is on its way here. Base systems report that the motor pool is being attacked and the generators are experiencing power fluctuations, probably due to close proximity impacts and EM interference. Teneyl anticipates no more than maybe five minutes before we fall under direct assault."

"Convenient that we've already switched to diesel generators here at the cage," Valentine replied. "I'll help Avery set the synchronization software once the plug is injected. Excuse me." Belmont moved to the side so that he could enter the control booth to stand next to Avery at the synchrograph station.

"Then we're almost ready to begin. Toho, how's the equipment."

Glancing up from her laptop, Toho nodded shortly, "We're ready here. The Eva's external batteries are fully charged. Safety restraints and interlocks are armed. Eva core is reading marginal, which is the most I can say until we try to activate it. Pilot physical monitors will be up after we inject the Entry Plug. The Eva's internal power systems are less than nominal, but serviceable; we tracked and shunted past as many of the power leaks as we could, so the batteries should remain at optimal charge for the next fifteen or twenty minutes in standby mode. And, the S2 is in passive standby. If everything works perfectly, it shouldn't give us any trouble."

"Keep it in negative feed mode as a safety precaution."

"Major, that's a pretty serious power draw," the small asian woman protested. "If the system is in neutral feed when we activate, it shouldn't give us trouble unless we spike it."

"I'd prefer not to test that possibility. If our luck stays true to form, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you." Turning in the doorway to look at the catwalk, Belmont nodded to McClellan, "How's the gateway interlink?"

McClellan interrupted his work long enough to give her a silent thumbs-up sign.

"Okay. Stormcloud, what's the status on the Interface Matrix?"

"Silent, on start-up mode until the Plug is injected. Otherwise, with this limited equipment, I might as well be making a sand painting with a lead box over my head."

"You aren't ready to go?"

"No, I'm ready," Stormcloud told her, looking back at her screen, "We're trying to initialize the world's most complex piece of equipment with a laptop. There's just not enough instrumentation here to correctly monitor the matrix. With what we have, I'm as  
ready as I'm going to be."

"I wish there was another answer. Aside from that, we're good to go?" Belmont asked.

There were affirmative nods all around, but not a smile to be had.

"Okay," she adjusted her headset. With a swallow, she began, "Lt. Wise, are you in position?"

"Yes, Sir. We're waiting for you to flood the tube."

"Very well, Lt. Toho," she turned, moving the microphone away from her mouth, "have the tube flooded with LCL."

"Yes, Sir," Toho answered, then spoke into her microphone, "Flood Entry plug with LCL and stand by for Lt. Wise's egress."

"Be Brave," Her father told her one last time.

"LCL flood procedure commencing now," the radio in Jane's ear squeaked.

She waited anxiously for something to happen. Still, frightened, she waited. Many rapid heart beats elapsed and even more, but the chamber seemed exactly as before. Null and void, swaying stillness, like the top of a skyscraper with all the windows closed and drawn. Mechanical popping sounded somewhere close, reminding Jane of catches on a thermos bottle snapping roughly against immutable metal. But nothing happened.

At last, the pale white light shining from below ran slowly over with a tide of yellow gold that made her father appear jaundiced. Soon the white was edited out altogether by morose lemon. No liquid showered in from above, no rivulets or drips cascading down the walls. Jane could not turn her head to look down, toward where her father's eyes were directed. Was the chamber being flooded?

A cool sensation started at her feet and ankles, steadily and silently working its way up her body. She remembered the sponge baths given her by the nurses every other day, only without the sound of running water. The respirator began to burble and bubble when it was submerged under the invisible front of advancing liquid. Droplets spewed up the hose into her mouth from the laboring air pump. Salty taste, she decided, wondering if she were now to drown. The front came up very quickly, filling from the height of her abdomen to her neck almost before the respirator gave her the first fully flooded breath. After that, it tickled her neck, cold and warm, engulfing her face with its tranquil touch. Then it was gone, the surface sucking her irrevocably beneath.

Bubbles spewed out of her mouth and nose each time the respirator made a frantic stroke. The ferrous, salty liquid coursed over her tongue, the taste of blood awakened from a time when someone accidentally punched her in the nose.

-An opponent can be quelled by sanguine flavor, my child,- the distant memory told her, -most humans are instinctively repelled by the taste of serious injury.-

She wanted to gag at first, though the reflex was beyond her capacity. Still, she quickly found immersion warm and welcome, like the covers of a bed on a particularly cold night. Her father was totally submerged, his face quirked with a bewildered expression behind the sheen of glistening yellow. He wasted no time getting to work.

"It's all right," he said, slightly muffled. The last of his air blew out in a flurry of bubbles. He reached for the elastic band that held the respirator mask over her mouth and nose. Jane could feel him unfastening it behind her ear.

Golden baubles, each one a decorative memory, climbed up the blackened chimney through a furnace haze of coiling convection eddies. Up was up somehow, almost the promise of an open sky somewhere far above. Intrigued by the beauty of ovoid gas bodies straining toward thermodynamic equilibrium, Jane struggled to follow their shimmering metallic assent. She could remember dumping a bag of silver marbles into a bucket of water, then watching intently as the beads clunked to the bottom. They fell upward now, spatters of molten metal bursting with a blizzard of glowing reflections. For the moment, with the deluge ensconcing her, she hovered in an imaginary coral cove and forgot her claustrophobia in favor of ocean borne dreams. Blissfully unaware for that solitary moment of what the next would bring.

Her father pulled the mask away from her mouth, stealing the bubbles with it. She saw him take in a huge lung full of the fluid, his lips clenched like those of a fish. Crouching very close, he gently pried her mouth open and sealed his mouth against hers. A light pressure by his hand against her abdomen caused a surprising burst of bubbles to explode from her nose. When her chest did not contract any further, he expelled his watery breath into her mouth, filling her lungs with a flood of liquid. He tenderly repeated the motion, getting the last of the air out. Then his protective warmth was gone as he leaned away.

Jane was amazed. Though the respirator mask no longer clenched her face, she felt no hint of suffocating discomfort. Even her eyes still seemed to focus perfectly, despite the liquid flooding them, urging her to blink. A few more bubbles escaped her nose as the sinus cavities in her head equalized. The liquid itself smelled funny, but she could not identify the sense right away.

Bending, her father placed the computer chip into the receptacle on the chest of her suit. Immediately, the suit tightened against her abdomen, forcing some of the fluid from her. When it relaxed, the space in her lungs was rapidly refilled. Tightening and loosening, it continued to cycle.

"One other thing," her father was miraculously able to speak, despite the watery baffle. He held out the plastic mouth piece. "Say 'ahh'," he pressed her jaw gently open. The mouthpiece fit smoothly, without taste. Jane knew she would forget about it before long.

Then Father stooped down and retrieved the battery operated respirator, which had finally shorted out. Holding the now quiescent device, he stopped to look at her. There was a careworn, parental expression on his face, as if he did not want to go, but knew he needed to. Deep dread was visible in his eyes.

"Are you ready Sport?" he asked, restoring his own confidence.

-Yes,- Jane responded boldly, her eyes giving a vigorous nod.

Touching her cheek with a soft hand, he bent forward to kiss her on the forehead. Then he brushed a finger along beneath her eye, as though to catch any tears.

"Be brave, and you'll do just fine..." he told her, beginning slowly to turn away. "Okay Major, I'm ready to come out now."

"Very good, Lieutenant Wise. We'll open the terminal hatch for you."

Taking a ponderous last look at his daughter, Wise pushed off against the wall, carrying himself, and the respirator, up the chimney out of sight. There was some light from above as a hatch Jane couldn't see was opened and closed.

Left finally alone in the dim, yellow tinted world, Jane regarded her emaciated reflection in the curved internal surface of the tube. Somehow, she did not recognize herself. The hair seeming too lank and formless around that skeletal face. Projected on the rounded wall was the image of a sack of twigs bundled together by the pale yellow form fitting plugsuit. The body, her body, didn't even seem to possess features of male or female. The doppelganger in the reflection stared unblinkingly back at her, its deep seated blue-green eyes set beneath an abrupt brow.

-God, I look horrible,- she thought, sensing, despite all else, the lonely emptiness within these vague walls. She remembered waiting for kingdom come in that other darkness too. But, this time, she fully expected to encounter the true hell revealed to her in that other void so many months ago.

"Jane," came Major Belmont's voice, so distant that it echoed from beyond a gulf of eternity. "This is important now, Honey," the first time in memory anyone had used that name for her since her mother, "we want you to become as relaxed as you possibly can. If you do that, this will all go smoothly. Your focus is the key to everything."

-Relaxed- Jane thought, -I can do that.- Mentally, she began once again to go through her old meditative exercises, gathering her Chi toward the core of her being. Focus, focus, always focus.

This was how that other experience had begun.

Copyright 1999 Gregory P. Smith


	3. Section 3

(Section 3)

"Major Belmont, I really hope you're ready to go. These bastards just stomped the cavalry motor pool flat!" Teneyl shouted into the headset. "They wrecked the airfield and the cavalry fort. The only thing left between you and them is the power plant complex."

"Say again? We're in the process of loading our pilot," was the scratchy reply, mangled by static.

"Just make it fast! When I said they were toasting shit, that wasn't figurative. If they attack the lab with even half the power they might have, they're going to turn North Dakota into the world's biggest charcoal broiler. The fact that you're underground is the only reason we're all still alive."

"What'd they do? It caused our lights to flicker here..."

"It was some sort of electromagnetic emission, maybe a Sea of Dirac. If so, then they're charging serious power."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely, no doubt in my mind," Teneyl growled. "Tell me what I need to say to make you people do whatever it is you're doing faster and I'll say it. When the Angels attack the lab, they're going to exterminate all life in the area. Who knows how far the effect could reach. No matter how cold it is, Bismarck North Dakota will burn. Without the N2s, NERV's toy and that young girl of yours are all we've got that might slow it down."

There was silence amid the static on the other end of the line. "We'll work faster," Belmont promised, her voice strangely empty when she closed the link.

Stomping their way across smoldering scrub, the angels had transformed the cavalry motor pool into a cloud of frosty dust using their feet. After the searing attack against the airfield, there was no more physical activity anywhere along the ground or in the sky that Teneyl could be see. Radio traffic had been abruptly reduced from a calamity of skilled warriors to a few delirious voices. They decimated his force in a single nonchalant stroke. Driving closer to the lab mound, Teneyl looked bitterly out the side window of the C&C, marveling aghast at the demonstration of power used against his men. Elston was glancing over his display, muttering quietly to himself, while the Sgt. Engels sat bolt straight in his seat staring ahead as he drove. All three of them had been affected by the last attack, realizing that victory was beyond the grasp of a military force. Beyond the grasp of any military force.

-All that's left is a child,- Teneyl shivered despite himself, staring at the corpse of a burned F-22 strewn along the side of their path. The plane looked like a crushed bug, tortured to death by some cruel child with a magnifying glass. Squinting his eyes, he could imagine that the gray cinder nestled in the plane's trashed cockpit was the remainder of the human pilot.

"Sir?" Sgt. Engels began, "You suppose any of our guys that retreated out onto the prairie survived the blast?"

"We did," Teneyl told him, "if they had shelter like us, they're still moving out."

"If not?" Engels asked, dodging the Humvee around a large fragment of something that had once been attached to an airplane.

"We gotta hope they were far enough away."

"If all twelve of those... things work together on the lab, no distance will be far enough," Elston tempted softly, his eyes locked in horror on his status board.

"Let's not think about it. Just pray Belmont will come through..."

"Come through with what?"

"The biggest miracle I've ever imagined," Teneyl supplied, swallowing his own opinion of the final ploy.

Moving with a benign malignancy, the haunting procession of Angels arrived at the power plant, which was buried protectively in the ground much like the central lab. Fanning out, the Angels surrounded the mound in a loose envelope. They immediately ripped into the dirt with energy beams and powerful fists, using their spade-like hands to rise a plume of soot into the air above their heads. Teneyl sighed, thinking that the spectacle resembled nothing more than a pack of wild dogs shredding a carcass. In less than three minutes, they easily pulverized the mound, exposing what was at the bottom. Then they earnestly withdrew.

When two Angels remained, Teneyl knew what was next, "Christ, guys, get ready to cover your eyes; they're gonna do it again."

"We're closer now, sir." the Elston observed flatly.

"Damn," Teneyl swore to himself. "Get back here!" he ordered Sgt. Engels. The man hastily scrambled into the bed of the C&C vehicle, which was better protected than the front. "Both of you get down behind these panels. Get ready to shield your faces and eyes against your knees."

Together, the three men crouched as low as they could, trying to protect themselves as well as possible. Elston was shaking his head, "General, we might as well be sitting in an oven; the back of this truck'll hold the heat."

"All we can do is suck it up. Time to find out if we're real men. It won't hurt for too long; you'll be numb after a few minutes."

"Burns don't go numb."

"If you burn enough of yourself, they will." Even as he spoke, the air around them grew deathly cold, as though something had snatched away all atmospheric heat. Feeling like he was going to succumb to hypothermia, Teneyl realized that he had not re-zipped his coat. The time for regrets passed.

A sudden blast of light illuminated every corner of the C&C, hurling Teneyl into a world of pain. Attacking the side of his head, then along his back, the panel he leaned against grew viciously hot. Resting on the floor, his knees took life beyond his will as they also began to burn. As if he was sitting on a sizzling hotcake griddle, his body began to jump and jerk reflexively at the agonizing heat that surged upward from the metal. Every surface he contacted was convulsively electrical. Burning over the entirety of his body, he struggled to get away, trying to grab the pain and throw it from him, as though it were a herd of ants he could brush off.

Breathing became pure misery, every inhalation bringing with it a lung full the consistency of molten lead. Even the radio headset wrapped around his ear suddenly seemed to bite. Knowing nothing but panic in his attempts to shrink away from the pain, he ripped the thing off and tossed it blindly away. He knew not whether the scream that pierced his ears was his own. When the agony finally eased, he lay there shaking, almost sobbing from the torture. As his mind cleared and the pain slowly receded to numbness, the sounds of agony did not. It took him a long while to realize that someone was still screaming.

"Sir!" came a shout above the scream, "help me, sir!"

Teneyl shook himself fully awake. Before him, Elston was brushing and patting madly at Sgt. Engels, whose back was flaming. The poor man shrieked, writhing like a tormented animal, smacking away both the flames and the hands of his would be savior. Scrambling across the still hot flooring, Teneyl added his aid to that of Elston. Swatting at the flames with their own charred hands, they managed to put the fire out together.

Their breathing rapid in shock, quivering from the pain of blackened skin, they each leaned back against the walls, sliding down the heated metal until they were sitting. Resting with his back against a warm panel, Elston held his quivering arms away from his body, his fingers a color somewhere between beet-red and charcoal brown. Feeling a warning tingle throughout his own body, Teneyl glanced down at his hands. To his relief, they were not so badly burned. Quietly nursing their little aches, neither Teneyl nor Elston could think of the slightest thing to say. On the floor at their feet, Engels moaned softly, still clasping at his body as though the offending sensations refused to let him be. Glancing out the front window toward the angels, Teneyl could see that they were once again standing stock still.

Smoke, rising from every corner of the compartment, swirled in minor currents each time one of them exhaled. Teneyl imagined that the air had a foul taste, though he could neither taste nor smell anything after the scalding his oral and nasal cavities had just received. Regaining himself somewhat, Elston coughed weakly, spitting from the corner of his mouth.

"Damn," he commented in a rough voice, stricken tears running down his face and mucous crusted around his nostrils, "that really hurt."

Teneyl chuckled through a crackling throat, stifling a painful cough that threatened, "If we make it out of this, I'm buying you both some of that real expensive Micro-brew from that pub in Bismarck."

"Sounds good," Elston croaked.

Closing his eyes, Teneyl braced himself against the panel and pushed painfully to his feet. His clothing clenched at him several sizes too small, as though the fibers had been melted. Knocking his fists until the burns there were practically screaming, he shifted so that he balanced on his own legs. "Gotta find a radio, let Belmont know that we've run out of time."

A rumbling shock wave passed through the small control center. Inside the cage, pieces of ceiling showered down on the Eva. Lights flickered weakly before power finally normalized.

"Damn," Belmont said, holding onto the door frame, "this is going to be close. Toho, drop the Entry plug into place."

"Yes Sir," Toho responded, relaying the order. On the back of the Eva, the white entry plug tube that contained Jane Wise motored diagonally out of sight. Hatch locks snapped down into place to secure the vessel in its berth. With the plug retracted, Unit-06's armored plates pulled closed, hiding the exposed tip of the plug from view.

"Pilot status?"

"Pilot's in place. Heart beat is normal, Brain waves are normal and breathing is negligible."

"We expected that, didn't we," Belmont said softly, chastising herself once again. "Dr. Valentine, this is your last chance to pull the plug. Is the pilot ready for this?"

"By my best estimation," Valentine responded, anger crossing his thin features, "The pilot is in optimal health for what we should be expecting."

"Then we're go. Begin phase one of activation. Initialize power systems and ready for contact with the core."

Each member of her crew nodded, then went intently to work.

"Is there any response?" Belmont looked at Avery, who was contemplating the synchrograph on the oscilloscope display.

"We've subjected pilot's signal to the matrix, but there is no receptor rhythm. The core doesn't know we're here." The oscilloscope bore only one wave pattern where it needed three.

"Sir," Toho called, "The power system reads normal, but the power level from the diesel generator seems too low. We must have missed leaks in the core... we're going to need more juice for activation than we thought."

Belmont looked at Valentine, who shrugged.

"Sir," Toho continued, "I suggest we switch the S2 to neutral feed mode; like I told you, it's drawing power unnecessarily. If we switch it to neutral feed, we might have enough extra energy to get the Eva to respond to level one contact."

Shaking her head, Belmont said, "Very well. I don't see any other option. Activate the S2's neutral feed mode."

"Switching S2 engine to neutral feed," Toho tensed, her hand poised over the enter key on her keyboard, "here goes nothing."

Everyone in the command booth held their breath, looking on as Toho's finger descended. Valentine became white and clamped hold of the back of Lt. Avery's chair. Belmont tensed, -here's my last second of life.- A moment later, alarms went off on Toho's laptop.

"Christ," Valentine swore.

"What's happening?" Belmont demanded, uncertain whether everything was about to come loose.

Toho typed swiftly at her keyboard, her eyes skimming each piece of data that flicked into view, "S2 is reading deeply unstable. It's fluctuating between positive and neutral feed modes. Power flow is jumping around like crazy. The S2 is not responding to command inputs."

Belmont looked at Valentine, who shrugged, "It hasn't blown up yet. We can always take heart that if it does, the force it generates upon exploding will kill us and the angel both."

"Yeah," Avery snorted to himself, "if the Angel doesn't use the heat to replicate itself again."

Looking back to Toho, Belmont asked, "What is the power transmission status? Is any energy reaching the core?"

"The draw is only fluctuating a little. I can't tell exactly what power is going where, but the total draw on the diesel generators has decreased by half. The S2 is still fluctuating radically, but it doesn't show any sign of spiking."

Glancing at Valentine, Belmont asked, "Could we be looking at a tuning error?"

"It could be; this Eva's incomplete, and the S2 is still experimental. Frankly I'm surprised the system's responding as well as it is. If it was going to blow, it probably would've done so by now."

"If it spikes, we're screwed," Avery commented.

"As long as it isn't interfering with the process of contact, we can't afford to worry about it. I say we go," Valentine said.

Stormcloud blew out her breath audibly, saying something in a native american language. With a shrug, Belmont grimaced to herself, "Not like we have much of a choice, I suppose. Keep an eye on it, Toho, it might go up at any second."

"Sir?" Toho glanced over her shoulder; they both knew that if the S2 spiked, they would be the last people in the world who had time to care.

"Just watch the thing. Avery, harmonics?"

"Changing the power levels helped. We've got a receptivity signal from the matrix now, but we still have to configure the hardware to match Jane's frequency. If I'm as good as I think I am, we should be able to tune without any REM data. If we can just get it to recognize her frequency, we can try to adjust it to fall into phase with her." The oscilloscope now held three sinusoidal waves, none matching any of the others.

"Major, the basic control software we loaded into the matrix seems intact," Valentine announced. "Frequency match should only take a moment."

"Will the Eva respond?"

"Unknown... give us a moment. Something's really odd about these signal patterns..." Avery tapped at the keys. Valentine looked on tensely.

As they worked, two of the Sine waves altered frequency to match the third, which represented Jane. At once, a blip appeared on the upstroke of one wave.

"Transient!" Avery announced, "We've got a transient harmonic!"

"Is it losing cohesion?! It's not... it's not... going to..." Belmont cried, her fingers digging into the door frame.

"Hold your horses!" Valentine shouted, slapping the side of the oscilloscope. The blip immediately disappeared, "Damn pre-Second Impact piece of crap. Just a hardware flaw, keep going!"

"Status?" Belmont demanded, sweat streaming down her fair face.

"Harmonics appear normal. No irregularities."

"Strange thing Major," Valentine looked up from the screen to Belmont, "The Eva's native reception frequency is the same as Jane's output... her thought signature is at the natural frequency of Unit-06."

Valentine exchanged a guarded glance with Belmont.

"Is this part of the buffering effect?" Major Belmont asked tightly.

"Difficult to say. Nobody's put a buffer into an Entry plug since..." he trailed off. "But that data's pretty bad. It could be that the Eva's at Jane's native resonance frequency because..."

"Sir!" Avery interrupted, "She's dropped into phase! She is in phase with Unit-06."

Sure enough, on the synchrograph the three sine waves had fallen into phase, forming a single wave.

"What'd you touch?"

"Nothing!" Avery protested laughing, "It just fell into phase! Am I marvelous or am I marvelous!"

Suspended. Empty. Alone. A tiny golden thread led down from above, connecting each member of the spine like pearls on a string.

"...relax Jane, relax. Your focus is the key..." Fading down a tunnel, noise lengthening, words of meaning only to the speaker, "keep your focus."

You remember focus, child? Of course you do, it is how you stay alive.  
-But this is so much like that other place. So much.-  
The key to focus is breath. Each breath the extent of awareness, each beat of the heart an extension of each breath. Focus breath. Find breath before life. Find prelife breath.  
-But I have none,- she protested helplessly, -The path that was white is now faded.-  
Focus breath, what was white is what is made of it. Breath or none, breath is what is there in life.  
Deep White, unmarred, permeating all. Encompassing all. Sudden, white. Feel the suddenness, the Deer, the white, the lungs. Breath is always there, whether drawn or held or given.  
Did you see that Deer, child? Wonderful white tail. It pranced through the snow over the lip of the hill just as you opened the door. Didn't you feel it?  
How could I have? I cannot open doors.  
Stop and look. It is there for you to feel. Don't you remember?  
I can't tell anymore.  
Eyes see yellow, they are open though you do not wish them so. Do you remember Yellow?  
Fluid yellow all around me, it is LCL. That is the name they gave it.  
Not that yellow, the Yellow. Playful color. Mischievous. Monkey hands dart in, nabbing fruit with deft grip. See how he goes away to eat his prize? The seat of healthy yellow, the spleen, the pancreas. A sense of Laughter as he taunts you over his prize. Feel the charge of strength from there, the cleansing feel? The sense of vitality?  
I really don't remember. I have not been well.  
But you know who you are.  
I know who I was. I am not the same.  
But who you were is who you are. Your past forms your present.  
I do not remember.  
Then remember. Lose memory and defy your promise. defy your gift.  
Promise. My promises.

-Christ! A six year old performing what took Baryshnikoff years to learn. But honestly, you should probably try focusing on female ballet technique!-  
A child dancing around the house. Constantly, dancing, moving. Every movement part of the same dance, some motions that she learned from watching, some that she created herself. She never knew what they were called, only sometimes what people audibly named them. But she didn't need to know. She needed know only look and feel. She saw the true name of each motion with open eyes.  
A child dancing even at school. Even in repose, the kindergarten teacher telling what toys to play with, she constantly danced behind open eyes. Seeing and feeling each movement sitting at the desk, her body never quite still. Other children watching her move, performing for them as surely as for any audience.  
It was always such.  
-Look at Jane, the girl with her nose in the air. Too good to play with us, too high on her throne of air. Little witch Jane who only dances,- came the hurtful taunts.  
-Jane, you will dance in the school play.-  
-But teacher, why? They don't like it when I dance.-  
-But that is what you do. Who else in the class can do as well?-  
Little boys stealing her lunch, little girls pulling her hair and plaguing her with jealous gossip, she went home to cry.  
-Daddy, I will never dance again,- she declared in tears, wanting the other kids to like her.  
-Oh, geez, Sport! What is this? Your mother would be so sad to hear you say it.-  
-But they pick on me.-  
-You don't have to believe a word they say, Sport. Do what is in your heart to do.-  
-Just don't know.-  
-Listen to me, Jane. Promise me that, no matter what you do, you will never forget your ability to move. It is your gift.-  
Shocked, she did not answer.  
-Promise me!- was the insistence.  
-I promise.-  
At school again, the play days off, the taunts worsened, -All leggy Jane, ballerina girl! Stupid dumb Jane who won't fight back! Leggy weenie Jane who does a poopy dance!-  
A boy stealing school supplies from her. Other children around laughing and jeering. At once, at last, she saw another kind of motion. A motion from a show Daddy watched from time to time. One type of movement that suddenly intrigued her. -Do what is in your heart,- came back to her ears, as clearly as if it had just been spoken.  
-All Leggy Jane...- the kid was in the midst of saying, when her foot came away from the ground, hooking into snap that connected with the side of his head. Such a surprised look on his face, a boy falling head over heel, unconscious before he hit the  
ground.  
-Others behind me,- she knew without seeing, feeling a fiery elation that called her on. Inventing the movement in its most logical form, she spun around, leaving the ground altogether. One leg swept out in one direction, the other counter balancing. Both targets went down as quickly as they were hit. Her feet were back beneath her before she fell further, landing her without the slightest effort. Even the principal of the school regarded this first grader with awe.  
-Mr. Wise, your daughter was caught fighting today. She inflicted serious injury on three other children. Because of how she did it, we are uncertain what penalties to impose. Nobody ever assumed a child her age could do such things.-  
Father was apologetic, despite the glimmer of pride in his eyes on hearing the news, -I'm sorry principal, she's been coming home the past few days with stories of other children harassing her. I'll try to keep her from doing it again. Still, much as I hate to say it, I'm pleased she defended herself.-  
-You're her father, of course you are.-  
The principal was angry. Father was pleased. A little girl sat alone that day, horrified at what she had done. Nightmares of those shocked faces plagued her for weeks. She said she did not wish to harm anyone again. On the surface she regretted it all, but inside, there was a strange guilty eagerness at a realization she hadn't expected. The experience sang to her a siren song. From that day on, when she danced, another kind of motion played in her soul.  
Taking the stage, days later, she was met with cheers of impressed parents and awed schoolmates. A thing she hadn't thought possible. She had never assumed that anyone would be amazed. Yet, as she danced, even on that evening, she yearned for the other sense of movement.  
It was when she stepped off the stage that He confronted her.  
-Child,- that voice was so mellow and friendly. His face was old but surprisingly spry, as if his aging were superficial only, -My name is Hang Yang Chie, I teach martial arts, and I sense in you a peculiar desire to learn.-  
With that, Jane Wise began her affiliation with Grand Master Hang.

I know you must remember it, child, I sense it in your heart.  
Even if I try to keep my promises, I am just so different now.  
Are you? Are you really? Don't pretend that you've forgotten who you are.  
In the emptiness, a little paralyzed girl sitting in a lonely, cylindrical plug ceased to see her reflection in the wall. She ceased to see her world at all.

"Harmonics?" Belmont asked.

"No irregularities that I can tell," declared Avery as he glanced up.

"I concur," Valentine added with a nod.

Belmont bit her lip, "This is going so fast. All right, Toho, have crews release primary safeties. Drop the gantry out of the way. Stormcloud, what is the status on the Motor Nerve safeties?"

"They all read green, ready for release."

Below them, in the cage, the gantry walkways running around the titanic figure popped free of their moorings. Each one swung away from the Eva, slamming loudly into the wall. The only remaining restraints that contained the unpredictable machine were the massive clamps holding it by the shoulders.

"Sir," Toho glanced back at Belmont, "primary safeties are disengaged and the gantry is clear."

"Very good. Stormcloud, status on the nervous interlocks?"

"Nervous interlocks are standing by, all green."

"Secondary safeties, Toho?"

"The interface safeties are stable."

"How about the S2?"

"Still doing the watutsie," Toho shrugged, an unhappy look on her face, "But it hasn't shown a sign of spiking, either. Power draw appears stable."

"Stormcloud, engage the nerve interlocks. Avery, watch the harmonics."

Stormcloud typed a few keys, "Nerves are now interlocked. No irregularities."

"No abnormal harmonics," Avery added, "pilot seems very calm."

Belmont took a deep breath, then spoke into her headset, "Jane, this is Major Belmont, you're doing fine. We are about to make the last set of connections, so, no matter what you feel, keep your focus."

Belmont turned back to her group, "Cross your fingers people, it's time to go to Phase two of Activation. Toho, release secondary restraints. Stormcloud, monitor synchronicity threshold."

"Secondary restraints disengaged."

Immediately, on Stormcloud's screen, nerve interlinks began to go active. Each one lit with red asterisk, running down the columns going from left to right. Each successive interlink went active as the pilot grew more closely connected to the machine.

"Coming up on threshold," Stormcloud announced, "cross your fingers..."

Belmont did just that. This was it: the most unstable time for an Eva. If Jane could interface with 12.8 percent of the interface registers in the matrix, the Eva would become active. If not, it would just stand there like a dumb chunk of industrial waste. Belmont steered her thoughts away from the nastier things known to happen during Phase two of activation. She tried to convince herself that the girl survive the process.

The number of active interlinks increased by column, gradually approaching the red outlined critical number. Interlink upon interlink glowed to life. For an instant, at the very threshold of the critical value, the level stuttered and hovered, as if reaching the limit of Jane's depth. Belmont held her breath.

An instant later, the critical interface lit up, engaged. Further columns followed, each successive link clicking active until the level slowed onto a plateau. Finally the display stabilized.

"She synchronized!" Stormcloud cried, "ratio reads steady at 35 percent."

"Harmonics?" Belmont said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"One moment," Avery looked troubled, Valentine at his shoulder, "there was another transient for a second, perhaps a detector error, but it's gone now. Everything appears normal."

Belmont fixed Dr. Valentine with a serious look, "Can we go on doctor?"

"For the final time," Valentine returned the stare, his lip quirked in a fluster, "I'm as in the dark as everyone else here. By my best judgment, the synchronization looks stable."

"It'll have to do," Belmont replied. -Forgive me, Jane, Astra.-

At that moment, Lt. Wise, still wet from his dip in the entry plug, came running along the catwalk to the foreman's booth, "Major, the Angel is here!"

As if in echo of his words, a deep thunder rippled through the base. Most of the lights in the holding cage area went dim. Belmont held tight against the door frame, while Wise was pounded against the guard rail. Everyone seated remained unmoved, but held protectively to their respective pieces of equipment. Valentine stood against the wall, paling.

"Lt. Wise," Belmont said softly, looking for one final excuse, "This is the last chance we may have to pull your daughter."

Wise shook his head, "Like you said before, it... it isn't my choice. Besides, give Jane an Eva's body and not even God would be able to slow her down... let alone a wayward angel. I-" he stammered, "I have faith in my daughter."

With a grimace, Belmont shifted to Toho, "Release safeties on the Motor nerves. Prepare to release final restraining clamps and ready for egress."

"Motor nerve safeties are disengaged..."

"The transient is back!" Avery shouted, "It's formed an unstable resonance!"

"What??" Belmont was dumbfounded with shock.

Her heart was ready to burst.

Rocks crashed down on them, echoing through the walls, denting the panels of the C&C horribly. Fragments of solid debris fell from the sky like oversized hail stones.

"Yes, Goddammit!! They're here at the lab!" Teneyl's hands and arms shook, his burns protesting with such strength that he nearly dropped the hand radio twice.

Teneyl shifted himself painfully to look out the front of the C&C. Between them and the mound marking the Lab, no further than a hundred feet away, was one of the Angels. Its solid leg blocked out everything. Teneyl could see its arms slashing down, rending chunks out of the mountain.

"God help us," he whispered in final shock. What hope was there now of Belmont doing the impossible?

Moving closer to the window, Teneyl could see several more of the gigantic angels, ripping and kicking with an almost clockwork ferocity at the surface of the mountain. Every so often, they would fire bolts of orange energy into the ground, raising columns of dirt into the air that pelted down on the C&C in fist sized chunks. One such fragment crashed through the warped glass of the C&C's ruined windshield, shredding the front seats. Teneyl covered his face against the spray of glass. Other debris impacted against the  
roof, leaving heavy indentations that reached downward like fist marks. The former mountain of the lab disappeared rapidly at the hands of the massive attackers.

Completely without explanation, the assault stopped just as quickly as it started. Moving in strides of hundreds of yards, the angels backed off. One massive foot was set down for an instant next to the C&C, then was gone. The vehicle rocked gently under the heavy motions, which decreased with distance.

"We're finished," Elston said softly, ducking down to shelter himself, expectant of the inevitable agony.

"No," Teneyl shook his head, "Something's going on. The Angels have retreated about a thousand yards." Through the windows, Teneyl could see them standing, as though waiting, in a wide circle surrounding the lab.

Follow focus, feel focus, find the center.  
It came more easily then, energy, self heat cycling to her core, becoming the concentrated point she always relied on it being. Blazing like a small star seated in the crucible of her hips, she allowed it to flow in a way she distantly remembered. Around her, the shadows of the LCL filled coffin were burned away by the strength of directed cognizance united with the refuge of memory.  
Willing it to sink, she felt the passage of the heat downward along the tall axis of her body. Circling around the base of her trunk, the point of awareness paused momentarily at the tip of her tail bone. Wielding the bristling ball, she singed away all doubt of her body's presence. Lingering recollections of the Other Place dwindled as the new revelation began to take hold. Although moving by means of awareness alone, the ironic reality of motion was not lost on her. Her glowing center continued its journey, traveling up her spine along an envisioned thread of silk, strengthening almost in anticipation of the next step in the Small Circle of Heaven.  
Stretched out in her mind's eye, forming the instinctive complement of the meditative focus was the freeform mesh of experience. The final weapon of her survival was nothing more or less than who she was, no matter how joyous or painful. Joy and Pain, facets of the same thing along a path toward she knew not what.  
Believe in who you are.

A young girl stretched and grew. Each new set of motions presented to her were absorbed as if she already knew them, illuminating a vast array of experience. Strength was immaterial, it came with practice. Application was innate to the motions, each motion part of a tapestry of logic that bore no names, no faces and nothing but sheer interpretation. Movement existed in its purest form, harnessed in any order that seemed sensible.  
Not merely her movement, but all movement. She could sense its touch when it was close, feel its breath puff across her face, smell its energy ebbing and flowing around her. It didn't matter whether it was presented by people or things, it was a contiguous entity that held an almost tangible voice to a young girl caught in its web of realization.  
-You never cease to amaze me child,- Grand Master Hang was smiling a smile that the child never totally understood.  
-Teach me that, teach me this!- she always asked, her eagerness to grow painted continually on her face.  
In course he did, presenting something new all the time. The young dancer absorbed each piece as quickly as she lay eyes on it, suffused with the joy of unrestricted access to discovery. Months stretched to years, other more experienced students of the Grand Master grew amazed at how quickly the child developed. Some were frightened by what they saw. Of course, there were others that did not feel amazement or fear, but something else.  
Eventually, a day came that the child had not anticipated. She had only been at it for three years.  
There she stood at an open door, facing a martial arts master and several of his thirty and forty year students, -Please, step in my child.-  
With a bow, she did as she was bade, -I've come as you requested Master Hang.- She addressed him as was formally appropriate, leaving the word 'grand' off the title.  
-Dear child, you have learned from me more than enough to make you a master of this art.-  
-Master!?- she was very surprised.  
One of the senior students stepped forward as well, -Master?? How can you? This Infant is ten years old! She hasn't the experience, no matter how quickly she learns. I can't stand seeing you desecrate the art with an action such as this.-  
-That doesn't alter the fact that she is ready. Would you deny her?-  
-I would stake all that I've worked for to see that she is not permitted.-  
The Grand Master shrugged in that peaceful way of his, -Very well, disciple Wise, for your test to masterhood, you will face disciple Benedict. The one who loses will not receive the 'master' title...-

Was I ready then? Am I ready now?  
Despite the questions, her focus remained taut on the intensive point, which had reached the base of her neck on the way to the pillow point of her head. Motion, even in stillness, called her forward. Was it the promise of attaining something she dared not cease wanting, no matter how impossible?

The child stood her ground, seeing visions of young kids falling head over heels upon being struck with her feet. Those were children. Was she right to face the same thing in an adult? She desired even as she detested. Guilty hunger ran through her heart. Though her style of doing things had vastly changed, she still remembered past regrets. She could not know. In a peripheral worry, she was sad her father was not there to witness her hour of either triumph or defeat. In arriving this day, she had not expected to be faced with such a monumental task. This enemy who stood before her was not intent merely on victory, but on inflicting humiliation. Yet, she wanted only motion.  
Bowing to the Grand Master the opponents took their stances to begin the match. That they were to be masters, both understood the trial was no holds barred.  
The match itself was a blur. For each thing that happened, there was instantly something opposite to take place. Jane hardly remembered exactly how she fought, except that she avoided taking advantage of openings when they presented themselves. Each time holes appeared, appropriately formed for her childish arms, she stayed the attack, wanting not to assault an authority -an adult. Wanting not to feel the guilty satisfaction. I can't do this, she told herself, this man is thirty years better at it than me.  
Yet, somehow, despite how unready she was to win, she did not lose either. In some way, almost beyond the realm of grasp, she held her own against someone who was far more experienced. The ease with which it all happened was sublime.  
At the side, watching both competitors, the Grand Master stood shaking his head. His voice reverberated for Jane alone to hear, -You never cease to surprise me, child. That you should choose repeatedly not to do what was born into you.-  
When she finally sent a blow through against an opponent intent on catching her in a grapple, the match was immediately ended. She did not know exactly what she had done, or where the power came from. An opponent flew away from her, a surprised look in his dazed eyes, not comprehending how her rhythm had suddenly perverted one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with his own. The child had done nothing but heeded motion's call. A single open palm and a well rooted body denoted the victor. Barely a  
touch.  
Once the match had ended, her humiliated opponent dismissed himself without a sound. No one else questioned her worthiness. Yet, standing before the Grand Master, she questioned it herself.  
-I don't have the experience, I can't fill these shoes.-  
-Dear little Jane,- he smiled, -the man who just left will never come back here to study again. His heart is wounded by his own vanity. It is not by my word that he leaves, but by his own. To a true master, the title means nothing. One word bestowed by me cannot be the sum of a soul. What matters is the means, not the end. My word that he should never wear a title has no deeper meaning. Mastery is in the heart.-  
-But he has thirty years more experience than me.-  
Grand Master Hang shook his head with a docile little smile. Crouching down so that they were eye to eye, he told her, -You and he are vastly different creatures. My child, I want you to give me a promise.-  
Saying nothing, she nodded.  
-I will hear your words. As long as you should live, you will never doubt your ability to move. Promise to me that you will make your gift what it was meant to be.-  
Hearing those words repeated, she realized at that moment she had broken the promise to her father without ever realizing it.  
She hesitated.  
-Your word.-  
-...I Promise...-  
A little girl promised once again, uncertain what such a promise really meant.

The point of heat, of awareness, reached the crown of her head, filling the Point of a Thousand Revelations to a brimming, bubbling peak. Echoes of that promise reflected through her memory. Intensity of the welling increased, its radiance penetrating her whole  
body.  
But I can't MOVE!  
It should never matter, Child. You know who you are. You know your own words.  
Her focus passed downward through her forehead, across the third eye to the point between her tongue and pallet.  
You know who you are.  
But I can't lift my arms!  
You move even in stillness.  
The luminous bulb passed downward, through her throat, through the solar plexus. It restored to the reservoir at her Tan Tien, her abdomen, with an intensity far beyond anything in memory. Blast furnace heat burned at that one locale almost beyond her ability to contain it, touching everything with its celestial glow. Spiraling the orb to disburse it to a more tenable level, she felt the excess radiate outward through her being. Like dropping a stone through the placid surface of a pond, the stirring washed out in a wave, leaving a tingling resonance through each part that it passed. Each muscle, long dull from disuse tingled in rivulets of condensed awareness. Nerve endings fluttered in a moiré of somatic illusions. The surge passed her legs to her feet, tickling the bubbling wells that resided there. Along an arm it focused, intensified, reverberated until it coalesced in her fingers as a shudder.  
Her hand twitched.  
Jane was immediately alert. Had her hand jerked? It had been in almost infinitely long time since she felt a muscle jumped during stationary mediation. Despite the sudden flood of insane hope, she sought the truth of denial during the ascent upward toward wakeful awareness. How could it be? -My hand couldn't have moved,- she thought to herself, daring not believe in the miracle she wanted so desperately every minute of her conscious life. -It can't, can it?-

Not faithful in the impossible, Jane lifted her hand and tentatively opened her eyes to look at it, certain that she would be as immobile as usual the instant her senses were fully normal.

In disbelief, she stared; her hand hovered before her face, big enough to lift a car and armored enough to punch through solid steel walls. Her heart leaped.

"Resonance is amplifying," Avery cried, "Wave pattern is totally unstable! It's becoming chaotic..."

"It can't be," Belmont whispered to herself, glancing toward the Eva. The eyes of Unit-06 glowed to life. "Is it flowing backward?!"

"I can't tell," Avery threw up his arms, "these harmonics are too unpredictable."

"Major," Stormcloud cried, "The nervous interlinks have become unstable!" On her screen the labels were steadily blinking out. "I'm losing the readings!"

"Get them back," beginning to panic, Belmont felt more sweat trickling down her brow. "Is the pilot still there?! The Eva hasn't absorbed her, has it? I will not permit that girl to be destroyed."

Standing beside her, Lt. Wise looked on in shocked silence. Belmont guessed that he was seriously considering throwing up at that moment.

"I can't tell, Sir," Toho said in a small voice, "I'm detecting a massive energy buildup inside Unit-06, obscuring primary telemetry. The external power sources automatically scrammed, but the power readings are continuing to build."

"Is it running off battery power?"

"Can't tell, the telemetry is unclear. S2 engine is still fluttering modes, but the internal interference is tremendous. It appears batteries are still functioning."

Stormcloud shook her head, "By the Maker... Major, this can't be."

"What now?"

"I've restored partial telemetry from the nervous interlinks. I can't tell what's happening, but it's like the Eva's generating new nerve fibers and interlinks."

Belmont felt her heart chill to ice and hackles rise on her neck, "god no. it's the same... it's happening again... it..."

Though no one answered him, Lt. Wise managed to throw out a strangled question, "Is my daughter alive?"

"It IS altering itself!" Stormcloud cried, "The interface matrix is in a state of physical flux. My calibrations show that the nervous system is definitely augmenting itself. Links have increased to a density three times normal, and continue to form!"

"Is Jane still synchronized? god no..." Alexandra Belmont's head was swimming. She could feel the change. A machine with a sister's voice -and now something more.

Stormcloud typed at the keyboard, switching back and forth between displays, "These... these instruments say the pilot is at a synch ratio of 150! If she exceeds 400, we'll lose her!"

"There has to be another explanation!" Belmont smacked her hands over her ears, "Toho, please tell me the angel's effecting the Eva."

"No, Sir, the pattern still tests as Orange. It's still an Eva. Internal energy readings have gone off my chart!"

"God damn!" Valentine exclaimed aloud, "Major, she's Hypersynchronizing!"

"Is it like before? Is it...?" Belmont demanded painfully, trying to shut the voices out of her mind. The voice!

"What? Huh?" Others in the booth were looking up and asking.

"I can't tell!" he threw his hands into the air, "Something's different. All I know is that she's losing the division between herself and the Eva," he explained. "Her ego boundary is merging with Unit-06!"

-now I've killed her too,- Alexandra Belmont understood, -it's all the same!-

In the cage below them, the Eva straightened in its moorings, visibly swelling in bulk. Its arms and shoulders bulged, expanding the armor that encased them. Joints that hung loose a moment before strained tight. The armor plates that were attached to the Unit whined and popped loudly with building interior stress. Shapeless musculature in the forearms pulsed suddenly into existence, forming powerful striations beneath the fibrous outer covering. One plate surmounting the chest twisted and developed fatigue lines. Unit-06 looked as if it were about to burst out of its armored hide. The final holding clamps howled like living creatures as they bent under tremendous torque. It could easily have wrenched free of all restraints.

Glancing from the window to the team, Valentine demanded, "Lt. Toho, what's the status of Unit-06's muscular system?!"

Toho typed quickly, shifting screens, "It's increased muscle density by 50," then she paused, "it's healing itself or something; it'll be reaching standard density specs for a fully complete Evangelion in just a moment! The battery system status is not registering... the internal interference is way too strong. I can't tell where it's drawing power from!"

"Synchronization ratio has exceeded 500... It's gone off my chart!" Stormcloud shouted.

"Have we lost her?" Belmont demanded in a near whisper. Of all those involved, only she knew the depth. Only she had ever been there and back.

Lt. Wise looked as though he was going to die of a heart attack right where he stood. Could he know?

In the cage below them, the Eva lifted a massive hand up before its face.

Then Toho startled back with disbelieving gasp, "The Eva has opened a communications link with our computers..."

Before she could say anything else, all the computers in the booth squawked with an elated synthetic voice, "Dad I can Move!"

Lt. Wise's jaw dropped. Valentine went even more pale, "God almighty! She's still there! It happened and she's still there!"

"Jane, is that you?" Belmont asked with a dead tongue. These echoes felt the same and different. Two voices half remembered.

"Yes Major Belmont... Can you see?! I can Move!" the Eva was waving its arms to and fro, its fingers flexing like mad. The shoulder clamps strained even further at the pure strength of the entity.

"Alexandra!" Dr. Valentine cried, "She's still there, we have a chance! We have to use her against the Angel before it's too late! We can fight the Angel!!"

"I can't..." Belmont began, taking a deep breath.

"There is no time. We have to go now!" someone else cried.

"I..."

"Now! Do it Now!"

Steeling herself, she bit the inside of her cheek, "Toho, power status?" forgive me...

"I don't know... five minutes... maybe! Interference to the battery readings is unbelievable, I'm only guessing at the charge. Most of the telemetry is garbage."

"It- It'll have to do! Avery," Belmont cried, make a split second decision, "can we open a path to get that Eva out onto the battle field?"

"Yes, sir! You want me to blow something up???"

Belmont held up her hand to pause Avery. "Toho," she ordered, "get ready to open the restraining clamps the instant I say so."

Toho nodded, her expression and body language showing more than a little tension.

"Um... Jane, we're under attack by the Angel even as we speak. Can you fight it off?"

"Can I?" came the reply, oddly flat compared to the emotion from a moment before. "I don't know yet, but... but I can at least try."

Lt. Wise smiled in relief, "It is her!"

"Okay," Belmont answered, still in disbelief, "we're going to let you out. Keep in mind you may not have more than five minutes worth of power before the Eva shuts itself down."

"I can move. Let's do it," the synthetic child's voice seemed eager.

"Toho, open the clamps!"

"You've got it!" with that, the shoulder clamps let the Eva loose. Unit-06 slumped for an instant, getting used to supporting its own weight. When it straightened, it turned its head to look up at the booth.

"Hi, Dad!" its right hand waved in excitement.

"Hi, Sport," Lt. Wise returned the wave. Down his face, glistening in the light, ran tears of joy that only the parent of an invalid would have understood.

"Opening the cage," Lt. Toho reported. The far wall of the dingy metallic container slid slowly open.

"Lt. Avery, get ready to blow out the egress channel."

Jane's quiet artificial voice boomed like a shout, bewilderment rife through each word, "I can move."

"What in the name of God is going on?" Teneyl asked quietly, his throat hoarse.

Elston was at his shoulder, looking out the window in an effort to behold what Teneyl was seeing, "What is it?"

"They backed off," Teneyl replied, coughing blood, "They were tearing the lab up, then they just backed off. Now I think they're just standing."

His hands quivering from the burns that covered them, Teneyl strained at the handle of the door. Despite the pain he managed to work the latch and swing open the stubbornly warped hinges.

"What in the world are you doing??" Elston demanded, mortified at his commander opening the door and exposing them for the next attack.

Legs wobbling, radio held forgotten in his right hand, Teneyl lowered himself gingerly until he stood tottering on the still smoking turf. Puffs of semi-cool air nipped through the holes burned in his clothing, teasing the agonized flesh beneath. Shivering and hot at the same time, Teneyl surveyed an alien wilderness made of a place he once considered home. He tensed his eyes against the dim overcast, but could not make out the slightest movement on the part of the somber aggressors. They stood in a wide ring that completely encircled the mountain of the lab, staring stoically inward. Wind rustled lightly in the emptiness, stirring patchy scrub with eddies of smoke.

"What?" Elston asked, sitting behind Teneyl on the frame of the C&C's little doorway.

The hand held radio came to life, "General Teneyl, we have some help for you. Give us a moment."

"What moment?" Teneyl asked, his mind stirring blankly behind the throbbing pain of his body. Any second now, the Angels would renew their attack, putting a final stop to any further resistance. No further defense lay in store; the humanly resources had been expended. Or had they?

A sporadic gagging of dampened explosions bloomed within the west side of the lab mountain. Dirt erupted into the air in weak gouts that were scattered pell-mell by listless wind. Loosened sections of earth slid down the hillside to settle along the base. Absorbed into an abortive rumble, the silence stretch out again into a depressing denouement.

"We're having difficulty with the egress passage," Major Belmont informed him, "In their attack, the Angels collapsed most of it. We might have to... hold on..." the radio burped a hiss of static, then cut off.

Teneyl's arm lowered to his side. Had Belmont just sounded the knell of their victory or defeat?

Suddenly, the earth gave an impressive heave. Caught by a ground swell that passed almost invisibly beneath them, the C&C sprang several feet into the air then crashed down onto its side. Elston fell backward into the doorway, crying out in surprised fear as he bounced into the vehicle's confines. When he was at last slammed to rest himself, Teneyl could only groan at the pain in his tailbone. He tried to steady himself where he lay as further geological convulsions followed the first.

The lab mountain deformed outward, distending grossly like a bubble of wet clay. Another violent thrust followed closely on the heels of the first, displacing soil and splitting furrows through the ground. Teneyl was airborne an instant more before abusing his backside a second time. Subsurface support structures bent under tremendous pressure, forcing broken beams and girders upward through the surface. Cascades of loose dirt tumbled down the sides of the laboratory mound. With a shuddering convulsion, a nodule bulged from the mound just above the buried cargo egress, gradually forming into a sizable blister. Strained to the limits of expansion, the blister cracked outward with a ghastly racket of groaning steel and rumbling dirt. Dust clouds expelled into the open  
air.

A massive hand joined to the length of an equally sizable arm protruded from the rend. Almost ponderously, a second hand joined the first. In unison, the gigantic limbs easily tore away the earthen vesicle, peeling it back as though it were nothing more than the skin of an orange. Head and shoulders came into view at the lead of another landslide. Though Teneyl was certain he could see the whole torso, the form was obscured by the tumbling earth. The figure's head leaned back to issue a resounding preternatural howl that sent a shower of dirt into the air. With one last phenomenal heave, the blister exploded into a cloud of dust, sending the figure hurtling skyward with the humble effort of a powerful booster rocket.

Teneyl sheltered his delicate skull as he rolled across the ground. Debris, both metallic and granite, showered down on him. Pops and clangs echoed as chunks impacted against the overturned Humvee. Elston was either unconscious or dead from falling backward into the C&C.

Hurricane force winds blasted dark ash from the ground with a powerful sneeze. The huge humanoid form punched a hole up through the overcast sky, bringing rays of noonday sun down to the tortured North Dakota plain. The Eva, if it could be considered an Eva, performed a lazy back flip at nearly twenty thousand feet before relenting to gravity's thrall. A bandoleer of battery packs rustling through the air behind it, the giant sized newcomer landed in a lithe crouch. Teneyl was surprised at the lightness of the arrival when its landing wasn't even accompanied by an impact tremor.

"My god," he whispered to himself, trying to come to his knees.

Unit-06 held the crouch for a long time. One hand reached out and stroked ever so gently along the ragged land. It looked from side to side, basking in the golden pool of sun. Slowly, its head darting toward the sky then toward the ground, it stood up to its full height. Taking baby sized steps in a bewildered circle, it tested each limb, moved each joint, flexed every muscle, stretched its back and shoulders.

"General Teneyl, is she out there?!" his radio squawked suddenly.

"Belmont?" he wondered, lifting the radio to his mouth, "Major?"

"Yes, sir. Is she out there, sir?"

Tattooed in elaborate sideshow freak patterns, the orange, yellow and gray Eva unit wore only a fraction of an Eva's armor. So little in fact that it didn't resemble any of its older cousins. It even lacked the signature Eva knee guards and shoulder panels, causing it to appear rather short and squat compared to its counterparts. Unencumbered as it was, it moved far differently from the others as well. Somehow, it moved much more easily.

"Uh, yeah," Teneyl nodded to himself, "she's here."

Cinching up the loose bandoleer of battery packs it... -she- suddenly exploded into a blindingly fast pirouette. Limbs abruptly pulled in, the body spun more quickly than seemed possible. Tornadic wind generated concussively in every direction knocked Teneyl flat on his back so hard that he lost his breath. The blast of air ended a moment later, revealing its creator standing still on one leg with her arms extended high over her head. She could practically touch the clouds stretched like that.

Then she stopped and stood idly, hand on hips with her head cocked to the side.

"Jesus H Christ!" Teneyl squealed into the radio when he managed to get back to his feet, "Is that Unit-06? What the hell is it... she... doing?! Isn't she going to attack the Angels?"

"Hold on general, we might have a bit of a situation here. Let me patch you into a conversation we've got going with the computers."

Then the line lit up with a synthetic choir that sounded like the voice of a young girl, "...But Dad! Do you see? I can touch things! I can touch the ground! Touch the dirt! My body dances when I tell it to! I CAN MOVE!!!"

She spun in another pirouette, this one only fast enough to kick up a minor breeze. With her back arched and her arms twisting an elegant corkscrew around her body, she kicked out her airborne leg to stop the spin. She finished with a quaint little curtsy as though she were on stage expecting applauds. Around her, the Angels began to stir.

"That's really good, Sport, what I'm saying is that right now might not be the best time for a command performance," a man's voice answered. "You've got maybe four minutes of power left if Toho's right. Belmont just told me that General Teneyl is on the line with us."

"Who is this?" Teneyl asked, wary of the twelve deadly opponents steadily preparing to wipe out everyone. They were begin to stretch themselves, like mature insects struggling for the first time out of sloughed exoskeletons.

"Lt. Wise, sir," the man answered, "my daughter is the pilot."

"Uh, excellent," Teneyl responded sarcastically. "Would you mind telling her we've got a bunch of nasty enemies out here that aren't particularly happy to see her."

"Sir..."

"Does the Angel have feathers? General," the girl sounded so young. "You're out here too! Where are you?" The Eva dipped her head, looking toward the ground in search of whoever she was talking to. She might have tripped over the C&C Humvee and squished Teneyl had she shuffled just a few paces toward him. "I want to see what the Angel looks like!"

"I'm down here, to your right." Teneyl told her, waving his arms in the direction of the Eva. Unit-06 glanced around until she saw him.

"Oh, there you are! How little! Where is the Angel? I want to see."

"Look over that way," Teneyl said, pointing outward toward the ring of sentinel Angels.

The Eva looked where he was pointing. She was still for a long time, "That's not what I've always heard Angels look like."

"It doesn't matter what they look like!" Teneyl swallowed the curse that almost exploded out of his mouth. "We really need you to take care of them before they kill us all. Now, please do something about Them!"

"Take them out?" was the inane response.

"Yes!"

"All of them?"

"If you please."

Copyright 1999 Gregory P. Smith


	4. Section 4

(Section 4)

It had been so distantly long.

Fighting.

Jane had not fought with her hands and feet in so long she almost completely failed to recall what it was like. Almost.

But she could walk again! Her arms lifted, her fingers flexed, she could bend her legs and knees, stretch her back. She could command her hands to cup, scooping up tender loam from the ground, its texture tickling her palm as she sifted it through her fingers. With a pulse of effort, she sensed rocks shattering under the force of her clench. Most of all, dance movement sprang from her heart without the slightest bidding. Was fighting any different?

This world was absolutely the most beautiful place she had ever seen. Clouds of puffy gray formed a ceiling of indefinable complexity. The rolling surface composing the floor was colored so many tones of brown that her eyes refused to distinguish them all. Gusts of air washed around her from no discernible source, swirling like the waters of some invisible river. From above there trickled light produced by no manmade fixture. She felt warmth and cold not generated by human appliance. To her eyes, nothing else was needed to make this world absolutely perfect. A waking dream, impossible even in its reality. Stretched out to infinity from where she stood, there was no vastness more splendid.

The voice of the tiny thing at her feet reached her again, "Could you please do something about them?"

"All of them?" she asked in confusion. Standing amid such beauty, she felt no need for fighting. It was so alien a feeling in a realm of such intense tangibility that it simply was not present. Without a driving intent, a fight could not exist. "I don't know if I can?" The statement sounded so stupid to her that it came out as a question.

"We have no time for this," several panicked adult voices were telling her all at once, "That thing is our enemy!"

No matter what they said, Jane simply could not feel it. The forms standing around her, each one swaddled in wisps of cloud, were nothing more than distant notions of brooding. They were all still; one collective intangible mind, quiescent ravens sitting on the posts of a coral fence, staring contemplatively inward.

"I'm not sure I remember what it's like to have an enemy," she half lied to herself, her voice spilling into the communications link extended from her will.

"But they're going to destroy us!"

"I can't feel it..." she began, still sensing nothing from the gigantic phantoms at the edges of her mind. If she was to fight this thing, would she not feel some sort of malevolent emanation? She had been so long out of practice that the old understanding refused easy clarification. Wasn't that the essence of fighting? An Intent? Yet, she could not taste Conflict's tart stench on these elusive forms. Their mind was perfectly still. Unmoving.

"Look around you," the general's voice commanded, "see for yourself what they've been doing to us."

Uncertainly, she did as she was told. Tracing her eyes over the boundless vista of wonders, features previously overlooked became surreally apparent. Pocks and boils and burns, ruptures in the flawless lines of the land, vicious reminders of an almost infectious struggle. Like signs of a disease rather than a battle.

"It did this?"

"Yes," was the simple response.

For a long moment, the nearly immobile forms seemed as gargoyles. -A disease!- she realized to herself, -And I'm the intended cure.-

"I guess," she finally decided, intentions of action solidifying in her thoughts, "I'll try to stop It."

They responded suddenly, a crystal sharp edge of piercing light flashing at her. As a unit, their large hands raised and fanned open, discharging a blaze from the circumference of their circle. Where she stood, she was caught directly at the epicenter of the attack.

Startled, Jane was overwhelmed beneath an ocean swell of pure force, the cascade peeling her back in layers. Blinding light cut through her with the ease of a warm blade through butter.  
-PARALYSIS!- was the truthful bolt that skewered her first.

"We've got video! Spotter 5 is broadcasting again!"

"Stabilize the link dammit. What's happening?!"

Tainted by the battle blossoming on the open plains above, the live video feed flickered sporadically with a sparkle of astral static. The Angel attacked the gypsy Eva from twelve positions at once with a blast of white. Horror ran in a gasp through the command crew when Unit-06 staggered at the center of the spectral assault. Rumbles passing through the base seemed dissociated from the plight of the tiny, distorted figure fixed in the center of the dusty LCD screen.

"Jane!" Lt. Wise choked, giving voice to a moment that had robbed every other breath in the room.

"By the Maker," Stormcloud quietly agreed.

Wavering under the celestial deluge, the Eva lifted her forearms to block her face. Her hands balled laboriously into quivering fists. She reeled faintly for fragment of a heartbeat until she recovered from the initial jolt. Tendons tightening like banjo strings in her arms, the first two fingers and thumbs of either hand strained, curling like the hooking talons of a hawk. Powerful legs coiled beneath her shivering body until the immensity of their stored force sent her hurtling forward in a meteoric advance. The Eva's feet slammed down with rattling concussions, leaving a trail of furrows and flying turf in her wake as the ground gave way beneath her. She opened her arms wide with every muscle visibly tensing, and barreled head long toward her nearest antagonists.

"Dear God," Dr. Valentine was whispering, "this can't be right."

"What is it? What?" Belmont demanded, instantly aware of how pallid the doctor's face had become. The whispers she heard gave a silent scream.

"There's an organized signal imposing on Jane's synchrograph telemetry! It must have penetrated Jane's ego boundary. Toho, get a spectral analysis on the Angel's beam!"

"Already doing!"

"What does it mean?" Belmont asked, already knowing the answer.

"Analysis is coming back," Toho told them, her earphones in her hand, "the surge has similar characteristics to an AT Field."

Valentine shook his head nervously, "Without better instrumentation there's no way to tell. My guess is that the Angel has initiated First Level contact with Unit-06. Jane's taking psychic pollution!"

"Why won't she raise her AT Field?" Lt. Wise was asking in a strangled voice, "she can't fight the thing like that!"

"Status has no readings!" Toho told him, "I can't clear the interference from Unit-06's telemetry signal!"

"Unit-06 is incomplete," Belmont answered in a voice that felt much calmer than the tornado kicking up in her skull, "She may not be mechanically able."

Bathed in an aura of white, Unit-06 was among her opponents before the persistence of human vision caught up. Her body transformed into a spinning dervish of motion without the slightest pause, every limb brought up like a weapon. Slashing with her fingers and flailing with her feet, she never seemed to reach any of her targets despite the fact that each blow was as accurate and powerful as anyone had ever seen. Barred by unbreachable barriers, she slammed with each strike into walls that were invisible. Though protecting the Angel from harm in the wild attack, the invisible AT Fields hardly slowed her down. Instead, Unit-06 careened flat into each barrier with pinballish resolve. At every collision, the angular battery packs belted to her massive back shuddered precariously in their delicate makeshift fastenings.

"What's wrong with her?" Lt. Wise was asking himself in a stuporous awe that bordered on shock, "this isn't how Jane fights."

"I think there's a more appropriate question my distraught friend," Valentine told him, a cruel flicker behind his anguished voice. His face twitched bizarrely when he spoke again, "why didn't she stop in her tracks when it first blasted her? I can't believe she's actually still moving. From what I can tell, any other pilot would have been reduced to cowering on their knees by now. The psychic pollution hardly phased her!"

"But that isn't how Jane fights!" Wise insisted frantically, trying to wedge himself behind the computer in front of a protesting Avery, "We have to help her!"

Valentine stopped him with an extended arm. "Just take a break. I- I'll figure something out," but the statement was empty.

On the screen, knowing that the Eva didn't understand her peril, the Angel's bodies began to encircle their helpless victim. Their limbs almost seemed to quiver in greedy anticipation. To Major Belmont, the spectacle resembled a flock of vultures cornering a desperately harassed animal. This was the first time the whispers had ever seemed in fear. -They're going to shred her and kill us in the process. I should have known it would come down to this. That I should die for this series of sins is long overdue.-

-GUILT!- shrieked the truth, a thousand dagger needles striking into her floundering brain.  
-Never!- she tried to deny, attempting to suppress the memories that gushed forth whether she wanted them or not.

-It was your fault!- the man cried, his face inches from hers as he shouted. Spittle struck her in the eyes, stinging along with his hot breath. Already she was too weak to move away, condemnably bedridden for nearly two agonizing weeks. She could barely lift her head from the pillow.  
-no.- she protested in a croaking voice, the necessary wind not quite filling her lungs.  
-If it weren't for you, I would be a Master now.-  
-i didn't mean it.-  
-You and your plucky Genius!- he raged on, -Enchant everyone who matters with your inexperience and lies! If it weren't for you, the Grandmaster would still be with us just as before! No favorites, No betters.-  
-i didn't mean...-  
-And now this,- he continued to shout, heedless of her nearly inaudible protestations, -He won't ever be teaching again! Even those of us he didn't disown... because of you!-  
-no- tears ran down her cheeks.  
-Oh, Didn't you know?- he feigned surprise, half verging on cruel laughter, -he felt so sorry for you and this little stunt that he gave himself an aneurysm. Now you're the only one who knows what he had to teach, and you won't be showing anyone! So much  
for prodigal protegees!-  
She sobbed in quiet rasps wanting someone, anyone, to come and hold her. It was all her fault.  
-Selfish little Bitch. Finally Jane Wise slips toward the abyss,- he taunted in scathing tones, etching the moment so deeply into her mind that she would remember it in nightmares for months, -hopefully no one will remember, or believe that she ever existed.-  
Lip quivering, she could not deny it.  
-Robbed of her glimmering movement, she is nothing. Disconnected from the whole, she means nothing. HA!- he laughed, -As far as I'm concerned, you're getting the least of what you deserve!- The door slammed shut behind him as he left.  
-i'm sorry,- she said to the ringing silence, the last words she ever spoke before stillness robbed her voice.

-No!- she cried out in abject denial, struggling to push the thoughts away, trying to fight off the darkness she could see looming in the distance.  
-GUILT!- The jury accused, their voice raging over her like the squawking of a million migrating avians, spinning on the thermals of her emotional reaction. No matter how she strove they bit into her, twisting through each minuscule hole she failed to block, overwhelming her with ease. Circumventing all her parries, finding all the places she hurt, it spoke to her with nothing but the truth.  
-FEAR!- It told her, cutting to the heart of the matter,  
-LONELINESS!-

-...It may be two weeks or two years...-  
Daddy, where's my Mommy?  
She, ah, -left- when you were young, Sport.  
I wish you had known her.  
-...very rare, I haven't seen anything like it...-  
-...The specialists can't quite identify it, but these special vitamins may slow it down...-  
-...electronic stimulus is barely effective, only a mechanical lung can keep her breathing...-  
Will Grand Master Hang come visit me?  
He's in the hospital himself  
He can't remember you.  
-...All we can do is try to make her comfortable...-  
-...Congenital Myopathy, it may be too late before we can devise a genetic cure...-  
What's going to happen to me?  
I don't know, Sport, I don't know.  
-...When it reaches her heart...-  
-...I'm afraid there's nothing else we can do...-

silence  
loneliness  
fear  
-PARALYSIS!-

the only enemy she'd ever known

Slipping its coils slowly into place, like some cartoonish snake transfixing a rabbit, the Angel's bodies stepped in. Under the eyes of God, colored by the brilliant radiance still shone upon her, Unit-06 was now completely helpless. With her display of violence ebbing to little more than shivering limbs, resistance had finally left her. Under the continued barrage, the sixteen story tall fighting machine swayed with the impaired balance of year old toddler. The Angels' massive hands enfolded her colorful body, prying her arms out away from her sides with strange gentleness. By the wrists, they held the Eva up like a trophy bull shot during the prime of hunting season.

This was not the sort of fight the command crew had hoped for.

Yielding to his generally frenetic ways, Valentine stood shouting orders in poor Toho's ear. His demands were barely coherent, each one more futile than the last, "Spark her input cross-links, maybe we can snap her out of it!"

In shock, Toho was typing and protesting at the same time, "I don't know... I can't... I..."

Avery was just staring at the synchrograph, helplessly watching the signal harmonics decay, as if confronted for the first time by a limit he never knew he had.

Rocking slowly in her chair in time to explosions rocking the lab complex, Stormcloud bowed her proud face. She held her little dreamcatcher in a quivering hand, singing a quiet prayer to herself. Of all those in the foreman's booth, she alone retained a shred of dignity in her fear.

Lt. Wise was crumpled on the walkway, left arm slung over the rail, right hand crammed in his mouth. From the shuddering of his shoulders, he was obviously weeping. His head resting against the railing, his face was half hidden. Tears stained the front of his uniform.

Major Belmont just stood there silently, regarding the entire scene from a condemned distance. Listening once again to a scene she had never quite left, she recalled each instant of regret. She was empty now. She had done nothing last time, she could do nothing this time.

On the little screen, two Angels were holding the Eva with arms outstretched. A third slipped around back of the victim, its huge hands fanning open with menace. It drew the judgmental blade over its head then dropped it ax-like into the Eva's back. Sparks escaped into the sky with a short burst of ornate flame. The battery pack fell free, dropping earthward on the tip of a steaming plume. With that shooting star dropped the hopes of several hundred people. It hit the ground with a thunderous impact that belied module's overall size.

"Battery power has bottomed out!" Toho shouted, her hand brushing Valentine out of the way so that she could look directly at Major Belmont. On her face was a despairing question. Muscles locked, Belmont couldn't bring herself to shrug.

-What will I tell Astra when I see her again? Do I tell her I let her one and only daughter die in battle with this damned Angel? Do I tell her that she made a mistake all those years ago and that Jane's life still ended up for naught? What can I say?-

Blinking a tear out of her eye, she tipped the microphone of her headset until it touched her lip. Holding the ear piece, she took a deep breath to gather her calm. "Jane, Honey," she said in a voice that wavered slightly beyond her control, "Whatever happens, I know you can hear me. You'll be all right, Honey. Just hang in there. I believe in you."

The major squeezed her eyes shut to keep from seeing the Eva fall bonelessly to the ground when the Angels released their grip. Belmont did not see when they rolled that helpless child onto her back and stepped on her wrists to keep her from squirming. All Belmont heard was the haunting whispers.

"I Love you Jane," Alexandra Belmont barely managed.

Distant voices drained in. Words that made no sense, only sonic transients that reverberated through her, devoid of meaning. There was barely any 'her' left. Barely anything left. Somehow the universe was collapsing again. Each bad memory tearing a piece away. Each piece amplifying into a swarm of fragments from the rapidly dissolving firmament of self.  
Lost, she fixated on the one word that reached her,  
"...Love..."  
There was a face there, connected to that word. An alpha, and omega. Both the cause and solution to all things. Both with her and absent. A person she had always known but never really met. A face, a gentle hand, soothing and searing. Aware of her flaws before anyone else, giving her the gifts that made her what she was. There was a present of hatred and love, sewn into the linings of everything she knew. Something of which she was only marginally comprehending, what she was becoming quickly formed into what she wasn't and vice versa. As a result of a devious sacrifice, there was some ephemeral manifestation that she couldn't fully apprehend. Or appreciate.  
Like sitting on the edge of sleep, staring off into the world of dreams and knowing beyond a shadow of doubt that the ultimate revelation was just beyond finger's grasp. All on that one last step at the threshold of nightfall.

Two of the beasts stood on the gypsy Eva's arms and one on her ankles, holding the prone figure in a sprawling crucifix. The other nine filed into a wide circle. When their solemn procession reached nine equidistant points along the round path surrounding the prostrate Unit-06, they all turned as one to face the middle. They raised their arms and opened their hands. A simmering effulgence began to take form over the sacrificial lamb. They would charge their burst with a Dirac Sea, scorching the lone Eva, North Dakota and probably several surrounding states, out of existence in a matter of moments.

Standing on the lonely plain, without an army, without a gun, possessing only the tattered clothes that hung loosely about his battered form, General Teneyl watched the proceedings with a psychological distance that may have been Hope moments before. Trudging on the empty slopes, his nearly forgotten wounds were beginning to feel stiff again. Perhaps his age was finally beginning to catch up with him. He had done his job at least, expending every bullet and weapon in his possession. Too bad, in the end, that the enemy had just been too strong.

To place hope on a child?

He had done his best, but why? What was it all for? Why had the Angel come to this empty place, intent on destroying an incomplete, useless weapon? Killing hundreds, perhaps thousands of people to pointedly annihilate a single helpless little girl who had nothing to do with anything NERV was planning? It all made no sense. Tactically, it made no sense what-so-ever.

The air began to grow cold, heralding a gentle fall of snow against the dwindling noon light. One last snow before hell's foul heat. Even as he watched, the crepuscular rays from the hole through the clouds died as the solar mandate expired. Winds sealed the blanket of gray, locking in the rapidly decreasing temperature. As the coldness intensified, reaching through his skin, Teneyl bowed his head in reverence. A flake of snow tingled at the end of his nose.

He made his peace.

A pin-prick of light glistened down from the opening of a vanishingly long tunnel. Shiny despite the drab noire muffling her senses, the pencil stroke caught forms amid the chaos that scattered understanding like a prism. In showers reeling through the bottomless void, white blossoms blown from a cherry tree by a massive wind danced on currents of illusory air. Not cherry blossoms, but fragments of broken memory caught up in forces of misery. Understandings, impressions, notions, recollections.  
In the channel of nothing, one came to light where she might find it, making itself amply obvious to her distance. Almost as if it wanted to convey its hint of understanding.  
Laughter! twinkling.  
Child! You never cease to amaze me!  
What have I left?  
Past and Future mean nothing, Child. You carry with you every tool you'll ever need, regardless of what you recall or what you desire. If you make a thing part of you, it isn't just memory, it is you! Sometimes you're so eager to forget lessons so recently learned. Whatever you are doing, where ever you are, no matter what is happening around you, the past can't touch and you never reach the future. Those are tools only, and they must have their place. The body of human action exists at one point. Regardless of memory or desire, you are only where you are. At any point in space or time, you must be who and what you are, regardless of what changes within you or in your surroundings. It is Enlightenment.  
I'm not sure I understand.  
No one particular understanding is ever the same; it is all interpretation. Even from one moment to the next. Just be at the moment. Be vital. Use the tools that are in your grasp. Remember of yourself. When used in all existence, fighting, thinking or just living, the most important key of understanding is the spirit of vitality. When the spirit of vitality is bright and luminous, the ears and eyes are real. It does not matter if your opponent's hands are as fast as a flying swallow, an ant's shouting to your listening is like a tiger's roaring. Vitality is humanity at one indivisible point. The essence of immortality is in the understanding of mortality. The essence of understanding is living, and the essence of living is vitality despite how the past or future touch you.  
How do I do this?  
Just trust me. Be at a point, allow another's motions and actions to shape your response. Past and Future can be used as weapons not only to determine you, but also to defeat any opponent. Accept what you are without regret. You cannot change what has already passed and you cannot effect what may not occur. You can only be where you are. Follow your nature, Child, it is one that cannot fail you.  
Keep my Promises?  
Heavens no! Meet your Gift!

In the flittering void of Chaos, a child let go of the underpinnings she had attempted to guard with her life. She threw herself to the currents, allowing them to carry her where they would. Past did not matter. Future could not hold her. No threats, no fears, no thoughts of loss.  
At once reality crystallized into being. Sucked away by its own sheering winds, limbo dissipated. Fear of Guilt fell away, a set of shackles she hadn't even been aware she was wearing. Cut free from past and future, Loneliness disappeared without Time to anchor it. Without Memory to sustain it, and without dread of returning to its grasp, notions of Paralysis were gone. Pulsing into being in her abdomen, looping, lacing upward through her physicality, the Small Circle of Heaven, her conceptual understanding of her corporeal and spiritual selves, sprang forth clear and unmarred.

Her opponent's initial energy attack fell away like water shed from the feathered back of a duck paddling on the surface of a glistening pond.

Bodies standing over her with an effervescence of light, tart odors of ozone and heat, forlorn breezes of intense cold. In an instant, she registered it all. Her arms and feet were pinned to the ground by the full weight of three bodies, but it didn't matter.

Collecting her heat to the bowls of her being, she fired impulses down her legs and up her arms, rooting her body in its prone position. Magma washed to her fingertips and toes, throwing a bass drum concussion along every limb.

Around her, those restraining her limbs splashed away, undermined by her unanticipated retaliation. They would never have felt it coming, since the action was neither intended nor committed by mistake. It simply was. She perceived forms moving, falling and flying back, limbs pinwheeling in strange attempts to gain balance, but she did not care. Purity of motion was the only thing that existed.

Thrown what seemed an unreasonable distance, Angels crashed down around her in slow motion, pick up sticks with arms and legs bumped off a kitchen table.

Without even glancing to them, Jane pulled her feet beneath her body and righted herself. Her movement seemed for a moment languorous, a heavy sleeper navigating the first morning step out of bed. But she need do nothing more. She stood, performing the action at one spot in the universe, prevailing on muscles without really considering what to do next. There was no need to plan; existence occurred in one fluid moment.

Seeing, hearing, feeling and tasting the world in gradations of elemental movement, Eva-06 turned about, at last ready to fight.

It had happened almost too quickly for anyone to realize exactly what was transpiring. On the screen there had been a sudden flurry of dimensionless motion which abruptly sent three of the attackers hurtling to the ground. Thrown by an impossible force. Amid the plume of dust, a figure stood.

"Something's happening," Avery cried, looking up from the synchrograph. On the screen before him there existed an unusual threading of signals that appeared inverted compared to the overlay. As he watched in disbelief, the signals canceled, dropping the synchrograph reading to a flat line.

Belmont, who still speaking to Jane through her headset, glanced over, "W- what is it?"

Before Avery could say anything, Toho was shouting excitedly, "AT Field, AT Field! Unit-06 has unfolded its AT Field. I don't believe it, she's on her feet! By heaven, she's as strong as It!"

"The S2?" Belmont had glanced to the screen, seeing the Eva rising out of the corner of her eye. The whispers were strangely subdued.

"Same as before. I can't see a difference!"

"Where's her energy coming from, how's she moving?!"

"I can't tell Sir!"

Turning about wildly, Belmont saw Dr. Valentine staring from screen to screen, shaking his head. "What is it Doctor?"

He was aghast, "I haven't seen anything quite like this before. Pieces, hints on separate occasions perhaps, but never all at once. Hypersynchronization with Unit-06, continued operation without a power source. Its just like before, only different. More. This... this reverse-synchronization trick she seems to be pulling with the Angel's invasive field is beyond expectation." He laughed, "Jesus! I haven't a clue what's happening. For all I know, she's established a first level contact with it and now it's experiencing contamination!"

Unit-06 stood to her full height, then turned to regard the glowing interstice of radiant energy at the middle of the Angel circle. She looked silently at the weapon meant obviously to slay her. Then she lifted her hand over it. Rocking her hip slightly, her palm swept down and popped to a sudden reverberating stop. Invisible force crossed the gap. A candle breathed on by the wind, the effulgence abruptly winked out. Beneath, at her feet, a sudden blast of air kicked up in a powerful gust.

"She's canceling the Angel's AT Field!" Toho said excitedly, "It can't form the Dirac sea it was using to empower its main energy attack!"

"Jane's Back!!" Lt. Wise was standing at Belmont's shoulder looking on with wide eyes, "That's my little Sport! Now we get the fireworks display!"

What happened next was beyond comprehension, both for Jane and for those watching. She moved only once, as if she had taken one lengthy, fluid stride that went everywhere at the same time. It was not a fast movement, but one that seemed like a long dynamic exhalation whipping through every hole present. As if she were everywhere and nowhere, sliding slowly in a full out sprint, nothing quite reaching her while she almost seemed to run smack into everything thrown at her. She became the calm center of a hurricane, effortlessly controlling the gales that revolved around her.

Her enemy, lost by her lack of feel, was caught totally off guard. She was devoid of intent, though working in earnest. Order seemed beyond her even when chaos never quite consumed her. Direction of action polymerized only for split instants, dissociating before it held any sense. In her, there was now not the slightest path or precievable plan of attack. For her enemy she displayed only the unreadable, untouchable numbness she felt. And the world subsisted in perfect clarity.

It attempted to bar her at every turn, but was unable to find the mad rush that should have been bubbling from her will. It tried to partition and enclose, to paralyze. Yet, there were no barriers for her to collide with; fences disappeared in her path before she ever reached them. Barricades rose in the wrong spots, losing track of the suddenly elusive prey.

Caring or not, she attacked. Flowing like water, swooping around, absorbing, dissolving, evaporating, she crystallized when the enemy wound itself into arm bars, leg bars, head bars. Her blows were determined not by her own effort, but by targets bashing themselves into her patiently positioned hands or legs. Limbs came away as they were presented to her, opponents fell at her feet even though she never actually did anything. She crashed against the rocks when they appeared before her tide, whittling away with infinite patience at a sandbar that was not long to this world. One after another, they fell.

Bolts of pure motion whistled toward her. Unheeding of any possible danger, she settled her center of mass, folded into the attack before coiling snakelike around it, absorbing its shock and redirecting it. To those watching, her actions were flatly impossible. She caught hold of energy bolts flying at her, rolled them around her middle and sent them back to where they came from, striking each angel its own attack. To her, the term 'AT Field' had no meaning; any explanation of power never entered her mind. Each bolt directed against her simply wove itself into her next attack.

At last, one opponent remained standing. Only then did Jane's single, capacious motion draw to a close. Sweeping through in a final spiraling forward step, the movement bled out of every part of her body not as if she were dispersing it, but siphoning it up through her long axis. Constricted along the line of her waist, channeled through conduit of her back, it hooked and coiled like the eddies of a tornado. Funneled toward a point, the drill bit passed in a wave down her arm, snapping to a stop out the palm of her hand. Pressure leaping upward fantastically, oxygen and nitrogen were compressed past their gaseous triple points at the interface with her hand, flashing suddenly into a visible puff of vapor.

Moving at the speed of sound, the pressure wave streaked through the air as a tangible, visible entity. Were it a bomb blast, the fantastic power of the Evangelion would have enabled her to channel it through a needle's eye. No AT Field stopped it.

The final body of the Angel teetered on its feet, a tubular hole blown clean through its midriff, sheering across the shiny surface of the globe shaped core inside. Jane did not push forward because it remained where it was. It stood, swaying slightly, not advancing, not retreating.

There was a surprised silence in the command center. It was like watching a magic trick performed by a master illusionist; you couldn't be certain when the act was finished. Unlike those in movies or television shows, there was no flamboyance in this fight despite the shocking fluidity. It was almost as if Jane planned out the entire scenario before she ever initiated the engagement.

At last the one angel body remained standing, swaying precariously as if ready to fall over at any second. Unit-06 was still alert in one corner of the LCD screen, moving as much as her opponent, waiting with unebbing patience.

"My Daughter," Harrison Wise exclaimed softly, a relieved smile on his face showing through the wetness of tears, "That's how my daughter fights."

Belmont was nodding; she had seen Jane use her talent prior to her debilitating illness, though never witnessed the girl quite so deft. While Jane had been incredibly capable before, she was now absolutely stellar. Augmented by the Eva, it was as if her skill were  
amplified by a half dozen orders of magnitude. How could two years trapped in a hospital bed yield such skill? Could she have improved that much without ever physically practicing? Whatever the justification, the reality was stunning.

"How did she do that?" Avery was asking, "Did we get that recorded? I want to see it again."

In the moment that followed, everyone was speaking at once, raising such a din that nothing was being done. The little foreman's booth over the empty construction cage shook with glee.

Through the radio, whispering in Major Belmont's ear, General Teneyl was cheering. She was certain the old general was probably out in the middle of the prairie somewhere, dancing a little jig on the battle scarred scrub. Belmont herself stood watching the LCD  
screen, transfixed by the Angel and the Eva.

Why hadn't Jane stood down? Even in the grainy image, the Eva's muscles moved in slow synchronous gyrations, ready to spring back into action at any moment. On its own side of the battle field, the Angel stood still, swaying imperceptibly in the cool winds.

For Major Belmont even the whispers went quiet.

That last one remained on wobbling feet, it's spherical, ruby colored core exposed and vulnerable. For one final spell, hunter regarded prey from reversed roles. Comprehension was mutual between equals, each gazing upon the other for the first time in full truth. The Eva stared at the Angel, who returned the look with equal intensity. Their conversation was wordless, on a domain where humans could not intrude, carried out in a manner exclusive to a single moment in time.

Then the spell was broken.

Eva-06, literally one of a kind now, prolonged that moment by remaining unmoved. When at last the serpent sensed it was time to fold her hood, she drew slowly upright. Slipping her hands together as if in prayer, the orange and yellow spawn of man bowed her head in respect. Born not of human influence, the angel assented. Its core glowing with a burning light, the wounded thing stooped as if to return the bow.

Red radiance metamorphosed to blue as it spread through the broken form, heightening the funeral pyre from within. Somehow the angel crouched too far, its flaming body crumbling into aquamarine sparks. It evaporated, becoming a swirling cloud as it hit the ground. Without a sound it struck, blowing outward in a glistening swarm that cast vibrant color on the drab gray of the sky.

In an instant, the embodiment of the Angel changed from a single form to a cloud of a billion radiant fireflies. River rapids not bound to the earth, the coursing flow zipped hotly through the sea of air. Dull banks of atmospheric vapor were pushed back out of existence while fluid from the ground welled upward in steamy founts. Sun burst down through the sky in a powerful wave, painting the world for the first time in unrestricted hue. Twinkling gnats coalesced into a whirling school that ran a race lap around the motionless Eva. Drafts of obscuring vapor were kicked up in a dynamic wall that enshrouded Unit-06.

Then it was gone. In an explosive flash, the simmering horde blue disappeared straight up into the deep azure heights, beyond the vastness of the heavens.

General Renard Teneyl was the only command personnel who bore witness in person. Save Belmont herself, none of in the command center realized the event until the spotter recordings were evaluated hours later. Crying out and cheering a moment before despite his painful injuries, Teneyl watched in stunned silence. Whatever had just happened he couldn't be sure.

Orange and yellow highlights brilliant in direct sunlight, a massive humanoid figure appeared, sauntering calmly forth from the misty shadows.

"Jane?" Teneyl asked into his radio, "What just happened?"

"It's gone General," came the soft reply, almost sad. Something about the voice was very different from her earlier speech. She almost seemed older.

"Did you kill it?" he wondered.

"No, General," was her reply.

"Is it coming back?" he continued urgently. "Will there be more fighting?"

"Not here, no."

"Why?" Teneyl asked.

"There were other things it needed to do yet. It's death wasn't to be at my hand," she explained simply.

By this time, those in the command center were paying attention to their conversation.

"How do you know it won't come back?" Major Belmont asked tightly.

"I know."

"Can you be certain?" Belmont almost could not conceal her vocal quaver behind the radio static.

"Trust me..." was the only response.

Walking steadily across the northern prairie land, Unit-06 emerged victorious in its contest with the Fifteenth Angel.

------------------------------

Afterward: Three Days later-

Chairman Keele sat ponderously at the head of the omega-shaped holographic teleconference table as he listened to the latest depositions. A secretary stood on a holographic platform in the middle of the 'U.'

"When Arael ascended again into orbit, it altered its tactics toward a more standard angelic approach. From what we can tell, it revived itself, then went against NERV at Tokyo-3 and initiated its attack without ever leaving a mid level orbit. When the pilot of Evangelion Unit-02 was dispatched with a high-pass particle beam weapon, the angel retaliated at long range using a form of penetrative AT Field attack. We assume that it was a more highly directed version of the same strike it used when it confronted Unit-06. The pilot of Unit-02 was subsequently rendered helpless with signs of level one invasive psychic pollution. Accidental discharges by the particle beam weapon in her possession at the time caused damages to the structure of the surface city, but little injury to the Geofront. Gendo Ikari then authorized the dispatch of the prototype Evangelion wielding the Lance of Longinus."

"Damn Ikari," one of the councilmen hissed.

"Unit-00 then managed to defeat the fifteenth angel," the secretary continued, "by manually hurtling the lance directly into orbit. The angel died in the attack due to a puncture through its core by the lance. We are now tracking the Lance of Longinus in a  
direct ascent lunar orbit with low probability of earth return."

"And the technology is not currently available for a salvage operation," intoned one of the councilors.

"As I understand it, sir," the secretary agreed, "salvage may not be available at this time, but could be attempted at some point in the future."

"Thank you," Chairman Keele put in abruptly, "that is all for now."

The secretary bowed before his hologram winked out of existence.

"What are the damages incurred by this scenario?" one councilor asked quietly, "Half a city, a military fortress with a good sized combat force, and two extremely expensive Evangelions with pilots."

"Damn Ikari! First with Unit-01 and now Units -02 and -06 along with the Lance of Longinus!"

"The Lance doesn't concern me," Keele resigned quietly with his light German accent, "that can be remedied by modifications to the plan. Unit-02 itself is uninjured while the pilot is of little consequence; she can be replaced to our advantage. What is bothersome is the maneuvering by Ikari to put Astradea DuMer-Wise's daughter in Unit-06."

"You think he knew what would happen? You think he realized what might come to pass by putting the matrix buffer in the entry plug?"

"Of course he did," Keele nodded, "Ikari certainly knows of the girl's importance. Undoubtedly, he guessed how Major Belmont would react if she was backed into a corner, though I suspect our minor insurrection was propagated by Dr. Valentine."

"Him again? Can't we be rid of the man?"

"His expertise is valuable, a very hard commodity to throw away," another councilor put in. "Without him, Evangelion mass-production would still be a fitful dream."

"His work," Keele acknowledged, "and that of Astradea DuMer-Wise. Haphazard experimentation by Fuyutsuke's team with Doctors Ikari and Akagi led to the main body frame, while the German team created the S2 power scheme and the Americans  
invented the mass-production technique. Unit-00, -01 and -02 took years to build. Without Dr. DuMer-Wise's work, Unit-03 would still be in production with the other Units years behind. We can thank her for her sacrifices."

"And the girl? It's all for naught without her."

"Exactly," yet another councilor pointed out, "Ikari maneuvered the Americans into putting her into an entry plug to keep her out of our hands."

"Then Unit-06 has a completed trinity?"

"The Unit has remained activated and unresponsive to external command for 72 hours. Whether the flawed S2 engine is responsible for the prolonged activation is entirely unknown. It is suspect that accidental component redundancy resulted in a completed trinity, but this isn't yet certain."

"What then of the final black box from the initial batch, is there any way to recover the one from Unit-06?"

"Unlikely," yet another councilor put in, "the Unit is completely out of our control. Chairman, you yourself authorized the relocation of Unit-06 to Tokyo-3 so that other Evangelion units would be close at hand if she grew too much to restrain. At this moment, the Unit is considered a renegade and extremely dangerous."

"A black box was recovered by NERV from Unit-03 following the incident with the thirteenth angel," Keele informed them. "If we can bring it back into our possession, there is a possibility that secondary copies can be made of the box without the presence of the matrix buffer."

"Then the renegade unit can be destroyed before it manages to jeopardize the Instrumentality Project."

Keele shook his head, "On the contrary, no artificial trinity created totally by accident has ever been stable for 72 hours. I suspect we are witnessing the aspect of Astradea DuMer-Wise's work no one was willing to believe. Dr. DuMer-Wise perished in the attempt to prove her point, lasting only 37 minutes within a trinity. Since our S2 design is still flawed and we are rapidly running out of time, this opportunity seems foolish to pass up. We must study the phenomenon more closely."

"Would Dr. DuMer-Wise have been insane enough to use her own daughter?" one councilor asked in disbelief.

"In these dire years, we've all made sacrifices. Jane Wise is necessary for the current mass production strategy. Who can say what else Dr. DuMer-Wise had in store with her daughter."

"What of Gendo Ikari? He's proven we can no longer rely on his command of NERV. Can we trust him to return Unit-06 to us for research? Does he know of the importance of the black box from Unit-03?"

"Reliable sources inform us that Ikari still knows nothing about the black box," one councilor put in.

"As we've already heard, the renegade Unit itself is uncontrollable;" Keele added, "we have little choice but to let it remain in Ikari's hands until we can complete Units of our own capable of standing up to it. Bad enough that Unit-01 was permitted to acquire an S2 organ... far worse that Unit-06 has now attained equal power and is totally beyond human control. Unit-01 is still the only thing on the planet with strength equal to that of Unit-06. Keeping control of the unit is more important for the time being than the issue of the black box."

"And what of Jane Wise's peculiar gift? Would even three fully powered Evangelions be her match?"

"The girl possesses the absolute best of what it means to be human. For that very reason, we need her to complete the project."

"What of the fifteenth angel? Why did it divert to North Dakota to attack an incomplete Eva?"

"That, gentlemen," Keele said simply, "is a mystery we have not yet set out to understand."

Gendo Ikari sat at his desk with his hands steepled before his mouth. His glasses were an opaque shimmering of reflections that shielded his eyes. As evening fell, sun streaming into the Geofront shifted more toward pink and red. Crafted from rose marble, Ikari's office appeared stained in blood by light from the huge panoramic windows. On the ceiling was a stylistic etching of the Sepherothic diagram. In counterpoint, carved into the smooth floor was the data tracing from a particle collision in an atomic accelerator. Two justifying complements for every act in the human universe.

On his desk, the video loop was running again, decorating the thin LCD display with a ballet that lasted only a matter of seconds. Grainy as it was, the recording was a total of five minutes and fifty three seconds long. Despite all else, the most interesting parts were in the final thirty seconds.

The recording demonstrated sky and terrain of another place on Earth, very foreign to a Japanese national. No place in Japan was so endlessly open. Sitting in the middle of the camera field, no more than five inches tall on the diminutive display, was the figure of a rag-tag Evangelion. The Eva gave a quaint little bow as the opposing Angel dissolved into a glittering blue light.

Ikari paused the action. In the image, the Eva remained bowed.

Ritsuko Akagi, running her hand through her short bleach blond hair, entered the office. She produced a manila folder from her lab coat pocket as she approached Ikari's desk.

"The Magi have completed analysis on the simulations you asked for." She dropped the folder on his desk, "I can't say I was enthusiastic about the results."

"Which were?" Ikari remained transfixed by the image.

"Using the current operational data on all our own Eva pilots, it was not good. I would recommend removing Unit-01 from stasis as soon as possible... even then, because of the current intellectual state of the second child, I'm not certain we could decisively control the renegade Unit."

"Explain," Ikari bade her shortly.

"Nineteen times out of twenty, Unit-06 defeated our Units in combat. Even with all three of ours working together -in peak condition and armed, I might add- Unit-06 was victorious one time in two while she was already missing an arm and a leg. The ratio reached one to one or two to one in our favor only when we threw a hypothetical Angel into the scenario for good measure. That girl has an incredible genius."

Ikari nodded, "I assume this anticipates Unit-06's operational capability to match what it demonstrated when it finally overcame the fifteenth angel?"

"While it may have been a fluke," Akagi told him, "I'm not certain any of our pilots are a match for her individually. Despite his ability and Unit-01's new power, Shinji is simply not the most intelligent fighter we have."

"And the second child?"

"Asuka would be the most capable opponent," Akagi gave a small shrug, "but she's totally unreliable after her defeat at the hands of the fifteenth angel. I might point out that Unit-06 managed to emerge victorious against that same opponent. Because it's been only three days since her defeat, I would recommend that Asuka get a little more leave time for recuperation. We can only hope she's back in peak condition before Unit-06 can pose a threat to us."

"What of the Renegade?"

"72 hours of continual activation, still totally autonomous. She... It refuses all external commands and has obscured all internal telemetry. In addition, it continues to display the pilot's personality. The Americans were even using it to help in their clean up effort at Ft. Tenacity when Major Katsuragi and Rei arrived on the scene."

"Is the completed S2 enabling Unit-06 to remain active?"

"Presumably, but we can't tell for certain," Akagi shook her head. "There is some speculation that the S2 is only partly responsible; Dr. Valentine believes that Unit-06, in its current state, represents an accidentally completed trinity."

Ikari glanced slowly up from the image still fixed on his LCD display, "Has he given you his reasons."

"Yes," Akagi coughed, "He claimed that since the girl occupied two separate functions in the project, she may well be redundant with herself in some way. You may remember that her mother, Dr. Astradea DuMer-Wise, had a hand in proving this could happen."

Closing his eyes in thought, Ikari rested his chin against his fists, "When will the Unit arrive here?"

"Major Katsuragi reports that she had to 'bribe' Unit-06 in order to get her to sit still long enough to be loaded onto an Eva transport. They left the United States four hours later than anticipated. Pending any further unforeseen delays, they should arrive here in fifteen hours."

"Very well," Ikari said softly, "make arrangements to store the Unit outside of Tokyo-3 when they arrive. Also, set the stasis lock down on Unit-01 for rapid release and put Rei and Shinji on standby alert. If the renegade unit gives you any trouble, bring Unit-01 out of stasis and do not hesitate using all necessary force to contain it. For the time being we can't risk bringing Unit-06 into the Geofront."

"Commander," she said, "I would like to implement an accessory training program to prepare our pilots to face her."

Ikari nodded and waved her away.

"Sir," Akagi didn't move from his desk, "what do we do when SEELE wants her back?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there, Doctor. Now, carry out your orders."

Akagi gave a frustrated face fault as she left the office, her heeled shoes tapping across the shiny marble floor on the way out. When the door clicked shut as she left, Ikari glanced back down at the stationary image on his desk.

In the image, a yellow, orange and gray Eva bowed slightly to a dissolving angel.

"What twist of Fate has brought you onto this battle field?" he asked aloud, "Is it for Their sake or for ours?"

Epilogue:

A warehouse, even a former Mitsubishi factory once dedicated to heavy equipment fabrication, was barely big enough for an Evangelion. Misato Katsuragi stood with her arms crossed, shaking her head at the amazing sight.

Working for hours before the arrival of Misato and her group, construction crews had ripped out much of the superstructure in the highest bays of the mile long factory complex. Then the wreckage was hastily shoveled aside into tremendous piles to make room for the new inhabitant. Now the building was nothing more than a husk, outfitted only to keep most rain out. Even then, some of the weakened sections had already collapsed without internal support.

At a quarter past midnight, under an unexplained curfew throughout Tokyo-3, Unit-06 had been moved from the airfield. Rather, Unit-06 moved herself from the airfield. Despite Katsuragi's protestations and admonitions, the Eva was fully determined to carry out any and all tasks by herself. Of course, without the leverage of a power cord to pull, an Eva could do damn well anything she wanted to. A sixteen story fighting machine stretching her legs was probably the least of Misato's fears.

Really, Misato could hardly blame Unit-06; being cooped up at the airport under a general quarantine had made the entire group arriving from Ft. Tenacity more than a little jumpy. Especially with Japanese Self-Defense Force F-22s and bombers making continuous patrol circuits across the airfield. Misato knew full well that the planes were loaded with N-2 mines intended as a deterrent in case their distinguished guest became unruly. Commander Ikari's orders were designed to hold the Americans at arm's length for as long as possible. Not that Misato was deluded into thinking that N-2 mines could slow this visitor down.

Now, under the blaze of several banks of elevated spotlights, Unit-06 retired quite miraculously to a seated lotus that kept her head from brushing the ceiling seven stories up. Misato would never have guessed an Eva capable of such flexibility, except that this one was still practically naked compared to the others. Lacking much of the typical Eva armor plating, Unit-06 had a freer range of movement than any of the Units stationed in Tokyo-3. Somehow, the giant managed to make the difficult position look comfortable. But, unlike any other Eva, this one required no support equipment. It lived of its own accord.

In addition to the guard group that served as an escort from the airfield, Misato had been accompanied by Major Belmont and Lt. Wise. As much as she hated to admit it, the two American officers constituted a bribe intended to lure Unit-06 to this new location. Much of the Ft. Tenacity party were remanded to 'protective' custody to await court-martial upon arrival at the Tokyo-3 airport, accept for Wise and Belmont. Misato found both to be amicable the whole trip, even though they both quietly realized they would eventually join their cohorts in captivity.

"Are you going to stay here, Sport?" Wise was asking into the hand held radio.

"Why do you have to leave Dad?" his daughter answered by means of question.

"Jane, it's just that..." he broke off, not certain what to say.

The Eva was gazing down at them with its huge glowing eyes, no expression on its mechanical face.

"... we can't get you out. I mean..." he tried again.

"Will you let me?" Misato asked him.

Wise nodded slowly before relinquishing the radio. Misato accepted it with a bowed head, trying to guess what the father was going through.

"Jane," she said as she depressed the 'send' button, "I have to take your father and Major Belmont away now. Until NERV can learn how to get you out of the Evangelion, you have to stay here."

"I can't leave the Eva," returned the young girl's voice, "and I would like to stay with my Dad."

"I haven't got a choice," Misato told her. "Commander Ikari has ordered that I take your Dad into custody to stand trial for disobeying a direct order. Unless you eject yourself from the Eva, you have to stay here."

"I can't leave the Eva any more than I could leave my own body," the girl insisted, "if I did, I'd die."

"How do you know?" Misato pressed.

When the girl failed to respond, Misato sighed deeply.

"Can you leave me?" Major Belmont asked, glancing toward the Eva.

Misato looked at the older woman. There was a settled and peaceful look on the blonde's face, perhaps the first Misato had seen. During their initial meeting several days before, Misato found herself wondered why the major, as old as Gendo Ikari, was merely a major. Misato sensed without words that this woman had been in untold contact with the Eva project. Indeed, Belmont wore a frown most of the trip, and remained tight lipped even when spoken to by members of her own team. The woman's blue-green eyes were returning Misato's gaze evenly.

"Commander Ikari ordered me to take both of you into custody," Misato began.

"The only person who will be punished in all this is me," Belmont said, "I was the officer in charge of the Construction brigade, all the actions regarding the Eva were my responsibility. Everybody else in custody will be giving depositions meant to nail my coffin shut. They won't want to speak to me until they've milked my team dry and are sure they can back me into a corner."

Silently, Misato knew this was probably the truth. Belmont would more than likely take the blame.

"In the mean time, I would like to stay here and keep my niece company."

"Alex..." Lt. Wise started to say.

Belmont lowered her eyes and shook her head, "Harry, please don't call me that name; I'm not that woman anymore."

"Alex," Wise patted her on the shoulder, "If you're going to stop running away now, at least acknowledge the people who knew you before."

"If it's time to heal and get on with a life," Alexandra Belmont told him, "I will do it only for the sake of protecting those who've been hurt by what we created. That!" she pointed sharply at the Eva, "is my niece and my sister. My life."

"Alex, Astra is dead."

"No, my sister is strewn across a production line of a hundred monsters." Alex spoke quietly, "Whatever happens, I can't leave her."

Wise looked stricken, "And you think I wasn't hurt by this too? She was my wife. Nobody's even told me how exactly she died..."

"I wish I could," Belmont turned away. "There is a lot I wish I could do."

Recovering from the shock inherent in the force of this conversation, Misato ventured to put a hand on Lt. Wise, "Whatever you guys are thinking, I still have orders."

"Will you let me stay with my niece?" Belmont asked again.

Misato hesitated over her answer, "There's a good chance I'll lose my job for what I'm about to say. But, yes, I'll let you stay here. As soon as I can, I'll bring Lieutenant Wise back to watch his daughter. As long as Jane's here, one of you will be with her."

"Your word?"

"My word," Misato assured them both, knowing that otherwise she had no way of keeping this Eva contained.

"Thank you major," Lt. Wise said softly. "Jane," he said into the radio still in Misato's hand, "I'll be back as soon as they let me. Don't give Aunt Alex a hard time."

"I... I guess I'll stay here Dad, If you really want me to."

"Yes sport, I want you to. See you in a while."

"Bye Dad."

Belmont nodded her thanks to Misato without saying a word.

Lt. Wise and Major Katsuragi departed together, leaving behind the scene of a family reunited. Wise went quietly, almost too quietly. He said nothing as he walked, his arms slack at his sides.

When they reached the van that would take them to the Geofront, a pair of uniformed security troopers stopped Wise with outstretched hands and cocked weapons. "I'm sorry Lt. Wise," one apologized not unkindly, "but we're under explicit orders to keep  
you restrained."

Wise did not respond, instead he extended his wrists and permitted the soldiers to cuff him. Katsuragi followed when they put him in the back of the plain white vehicle, seating herself on the bench across from him.

The little van had windowless sides, but tinted glass in the back. As they drove off bouncing on poor suspension, the entire width of the deserted factory was visible. Wise never looked away, even as hills began to block his view.

Misato stared thoughtfully at the back of the older man's head, wondering silently about everything happening in his mind. After a time, she ventured to speak, "I've heard it said that strength is born from adversity. If that's true, your daughter is one of the strongest people I've ever met."

Glancing her way, Lt. Wise gave a wan smile, "Perhaps... but I'm not."

FIN

---------  
Copyright 1999 Gregory P Smith

Author's note:  
This story was inspired by Eva tape 0:9 when I first watched it, and later discovered that Unit-03's pilot would become an amputee. Though it may seem Jane is set up to come in direct conflict with NERV, this was never my intent. Again, the story is not supposed  
to rewrite the history of Eva more than a little. If Jane encounters the other Eva pilots, it is doubtful the event will take place in battle.  
Jane is basically my vision of a more and less gifted Touji. Where she is headed, I refuse to say simply because there are two other stories to be written. Depending on reader response and the time I have available, I intend to eventually write "The Sister" and  
"The Husband" which would complete the Hidden Virtues story line.  
If you really want to see more fanfiction about Jane Wise be certain to let me know...  
I do not intend to edit or change this work, despite the fact that it is hardly  
representative of my style any longer. It was written over the course of two years -four  
years ago. I've since lost this way of thinking about things and could not, in my right  
mind, alter this piece. I decided to post it now because of a recent email asking why I  
hadn't posted it more widely in the first place. From the same stand point, if you are curious why I have not written more of this in two years, check the reviews -for those who read it fully, this story is received by two groups; those who are simply reading fiction, and those who are biased by preconceptions as to what fanfic is. For the first group, thank you very much for reading; ultimately, story writers would not exist if it weren't for you. For the second group, find yourself another hobbie, 'cause you'll never be open enough to ever blossom as a true writer. What is the lesson I take for myself? --- If you truly want to write original fiction, don't dally in fanfic. And I haven't.

-Greg Smith, 


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